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juggalotis
2009-10-25, 10:58 AM
Just recently tried this system enjoying it a lot. but i wish to inquire whether there is a build anyone knows for a "werewolf hunter" style vampire. Anyone? please?

Riffington
2009-10-25, 11:06 AM
Sabbat Gangrel are probably most likely to try something like that. The ability to shake off the wyrm scent will be super useful...

Dixieboy
2009-10-25, 11:07 AM
Well hunting werewolfs as a vampire doesn't seem like something that would require a special build, it does however seem like a really bad idea.

I guess if you really want to "hunt" them, as in tracking them down and putting a silver bullet through their brain, I'd go for a clan with fortitude and/or potence. (Or gangrel) so you have a chance of surviving should your first shot not kill it.

I'd furthermore get as many dudes together as possible, and as much equipment as you can get, seeing as you can hardly stand up to it mano y mano. (Barring gangrel)

Oh, and get the help of a tremere, they have a lot of nice abilities in different splatbooks for killing specific enemies.

GoatToucher
2009-10-25, 01:43 PM
The unfortunate thing about werewolves in a culture with firearms is that anybody with a gun and a few silver bullets can be a fairly effective werewolf hunter.

The problem for the hunter arises if you fail to kill the werewolf the first time. Then the werewolf will be hunting you, and werewolves make pretty good vampire hunters. You have to be a pretty powerful combat speced vampire to not get torn into gobbets by a starting out werewolf.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-10-25, 02:14 PM
Tremere with the Fire Path.

The ability to just set Werewolves on fire can get a lot done on its own :smallbiggrin:

Set
2009-10-25, 02:22 PM
A rank 2 Black Fury can do enough Aggravated damage with a single claw hit that an Antediluvian with Stamina 10 + Fortitude 10 won't even need to roll dice. He'll just be ash. In fact, she could do enough damage to kill some random schmuck vampire standing behind him as well (if any sort of blowthrough rules existed), and can do that nine times a round, at the cost of 'blowing her wad' and having to rest afterwards (if, yanno, there happened to be *nine* Sta 10 + Fort 10 Antediluvians all lined up within range). That's rank 2, mind you. The equivalent of a modestly experienced vampire Neonate.

It's pretty much unkillable, and if it touches you, you die forever, and it has automatic free Celerity. So basically, you'll be fighting Wolverine. If he had magic powers, moved like a character from the Matrix, and could come at you from another dimension. Wolverine of Tindalos, basically, only scarier, faster and much, much stronger.

The key to hunting werewolves is to *not* hunt werewolves. They are death machines. Take a 180 lb. man and combine it with a 90 lb. wolf, and you get something that's about the size of a killer whale with legs that irrationally hates you even though vampires really haven't ever done anything to warrant that hate (it's religious for the lupines, which means it doesn't really have to make sense).

Even if you kill it, with like, a LAW rocket or something, it can blow a point of something to not die and just get a battle scar. It's not worth it. Vampires are paralyzed and helpless 50% of the time, and Werewolves can move through a dimension that vampires don't even know exist, allowing them to come wandering into your Haven at high noon, circumventing whatever defensive measures you have, and kill you while you are making a Humanity roll to see if you can wake up before dying.

If you want to survive a fight with a werewolf, take Celerity, and shoot it a bazillion times, combining Celerity actions with split dice pool actions. Using celerity to run like hells might seem like a better solution, but if your ST has put you up against a werewolf, he obviously meant for you to face a werewolf. Werewolves run faster, can track many times better than you, can smell the presence of vampires, and can dig you up in the middle of the day, no matter how deeply you burrow into the ground. Running isn't much of an option. Silver bullets are nice. Fire is nice. Poison might slow it down. Darts that pump silver nitrate into it's blood stream will probably just annoy it. Don't annoy what you can't kill.

Going claw-to-claw with them is crazy. A Tzimisce needs to spend all three of his starting discipline points, and then *ten game sessions worth of experience points* to enter a combat form that is *not as good* as what a a Garou starts out with, *for free.* Gangrel? No. You'd need Fortitude 5 to have a *chance* of surviving a single hit, and that's not a game I'd want to play. If you know that your death-match is with Bruce Lee, don't bring nunchuks and hope that you can keep up. Bring a freaking Uzi. Don't play their game, you'll spend every discipline point, freebie, merit point and experience point you have and still lose, *badly.* For the same reason that a Tremere shouldn't get into a spell-tossing battle with a member of the Order of Hermes, a Gangrel shouldn't get in a melee fight with a Garou.

Other options include brave, brave, brave attempts at using Dominate or Presence (which the lupine will cancel with a point of Willpower, and then kill you) or using Tremere jippery, like flying out of range with Movement of the Mind while setting them on fire with Lure of Flames, hitting them with lightning with the Weather Control path or pumping them full of Ward vs. Lupines-enhanced silver bullets. (Ward vs. Lupines is also a nice nuisance tactic to use to defend your haven from those high-noon raids.) Other paths may or may not have interesting options, depending on what rules you have available. If you must attempt Dominate / Presence shenanigans, sabbat-embrace a dozen neonates, learn 'em up Dominate 3 or Presence 3, and send them to soften up the Garou's willpower. Eventually he'll run out of Willpower points and become somebody's huckleberry, and the blood-bound neonates that got killed only cost you 10 random kidnapped homeless people and some blood points to make. Best way to eliminate an enemy is to make him a friend, after all. Blood Bond fur-boy, and now you have the best defense against Garou jumping out of the Umbra into your haven at high noon, another Garou watching over you...

The best, best, best bet? Play a Giovanni, Samedi, Kiasyd, Nagaraja or other Necromancy-user. Werewolves were designed to surgically dismember anything a Vampire could do, and have access to unbeatable physical combat abilities, the ability to sniff out vampires, the ability to travel through worlds vampires can't even perceive, and, oh yeah, 12 more hours a day, when the vampire is paralyzed, to do whatever they want. So hit them with Wraiths, who can kill them from beyond the Shroud. If they can use rules from another splatbook against which Kindred have no defense, turn the tables and do the same thing to them.

While you're at it, take the 'Awakened Companion' Merit and hit them with a Euthanatos ally. A little True Magick will also help make up for the fact that Vampires pretty much were designed to lose against any other supernatural in a stand-up fight.

Others might suggest annoying tactics like buying up their Caerns and making them into strip mines, but if you know what a Caern is, and where to find it, you're pretty much cheating anyway. Garou Lore doesn't grow on trees, after all. Plus, losing a Caern *doesn't hurt them,* it just pisses them off.

Again, the cardinal rule, don't piss off what you can't kill.

Same rule applies for killing their kinfolk or burning down their forests or organizing a wolf-kill in the state. That stuff just pisses them off, it doesn't take one single measly die out of their dice-pools. One Garou, if it really wanted to, could kill every vampire in a city, probably in a single day (although it would take a week or so for it to figure out where they all lived, depending on it's particular supernatural senses / umbral reconnoitering skills). Getting every Garou in the state pissed at you is just a competition to see whose claws you die on first.

Additionally, no matter how connected your Ventrue thinks he is, the Garou also have business minded werewolves, so cunning plans involving razing Caerns or deporting kinfolk or culling wolves may end up killed at the legislative level, as your Ventrue discovers that he has now pissed off the *city werewolves,* who have been more or less peacefully co-existing alongside his kind for years.

I'd recommend only ever fighting werewolves if forced by the ST, and then only fighting them defensively. Don't go after them. More will show up, as they send out the word, and then, not only will you have dozens of werewolves coming from all over the country to kick your pasty white buttocks into a whole new shape, you'll also have whatever Kindred leader rules your area pissed at you for bringing this furry tempest into his house.

In other words, if you survive the Garou retaliation, by some miracle. The Prince (Bishop, whatever) will feed you your giblets for afters.

Riffington
2009-10-25, 03:47 PM
Set, I think your Werewolf games are different from the one I played. Admittedly it's been a while, but... really?

MickJay
2009-10-25, 03:56 PM
Well, your avergae, lone werewolf can do a TPK without much effort against a coterie of 4-5 Kindred, unless the vampires are well-prepared and combat-oriented (and even then their chances aren't that good).

Moriato
2009-10-25, 04:00 PM
Set, I think your Werewolf games are different from the one I played. Admittedly it's been a while, but... really?

No, it's very exaggerated. A rank 2 werewolf does not stand a chance against an antedeluvian. A rank 5 does, easy, but not a rank 2.

In general, in a physical fight between a vampire and a werewolf of equal power, the werewolf will win.

But then there's many disciplines for vapires that just don't have a counter.

Dominate, for example. If you get dominated, you're done. Game over, vampire wins.

Likewise if you get bitten. Get bitten by a vampire and you're paralyzed. No counter, no real way to save yourself before the vampire drains all of your blood and you're dead.

And some of the 6 dot + disciplines are just stupid powerful, and the tenth dot for all of them are just game breaking, players were never menat to have them, but most of them either make you invincible, or instantly kill your foes, or both.

For example, Protean 10, if I remember right, turns you into fire. You're fire, you can't be hurt by any physical weapons, and you burn everything around you.

When it comes right down to it, disciplines are a lot more powerful than werewolf gifts.

Take rage and celerity, for example. They both give you extra actions, but a werewolf has 1-10 rage, meaning he can get 1-10 extra actions before having to recharge, and you can only spend as much rage in a round as you have dexterity.

Celerity, on the other hand, gives you one extra action for every point of celerity you have for the cost of 1 blood point, no matter what level you're using.

So a vampire with a modest 3 dots in celerity, and the minimum of 10 max blood, can still get.. we'll call it 27 extra actions before needing to recharge, since you don't want to spend that last blood point, really. And this is a brand new, neonate vampire. It's nothing to laugh at.

I love werewolves, and in general, they really are stronger in combat than vampires, but the difference is not so great as the white wolf fluff would have you believe.

NPCMook
2009-10-25, 04:04 PM
How to kill a Werewolf in Masquerade: Embrace it.

One of three things will happen: The Werewolf will die peacefully, The Werewolf will die painfully, very painfully, The Werewolf will become an Abomination... which will still die painfully as it has only two choices, become your slave or be killed since it has now been abandoned by Luna for becoming the unliving.

Riffington
2009-10-25, 04:14 PM
How to kill a Werewolf in Masquerade: Embrace it.

One of three things will happen: The Werewolf will die peacefully, The Werewolf will die painfully, very painfully, The Werewolf will become an Abomination... which will still die painfully as it has only two choices, become your slave or be killed since it has now been abandoned by Luna for becoming the unliving.

Seeing as how the Embrace actually occurs just after their death, I wouldn't call this a useful technique per se.

NPCMook
2009-10-25, 04:18 PM
True, but it also does give you the ability to possibly get a cool little pet, or watch it suffer... or not.

Moriato
2009-10-25, 04:27 PM
True, but it also does give you the ability to possibly get a cool little pet, or watch it suffer... or not.

There is another option, though.

The werewolf frenzies when he realizes what you've done, and proceeds to tear you apart with all of his old powers, plus maybe even his newfound vapire ones.

Then possibly kills himself or goes into exile, but that doesn't help your vampire much.

mostlyharmful
2009-10-25, 04:31 PM
Set, I think your Werewolf games are different from the one I played. Admittedly it's been a while, but... really?

Yes. Really.

Rank 2 Black Furies can take out an Antediluvian if said Antediluvian is just standing there certainly, however, any level 1 start out Theurge can just summon an Avatar of the Sun to be their bitch... to jump out on their enemies from anouther dimension... after sniffing them down from said other dimension... with zero warning....

And most mental disciplines require the vampire to be concious (sunlight woot!) or to see their opponent coming (Umbra, Woot!!!) and even then can be shaken off with a range of Gifts (Woot Woot!!!) or just ignored with a minimal expenditure of Willpower (you get the picture).

Oh, and it hasn't been mentioned yet that Garou wander around in supernaturally linked teams who will die for each other that are part of a clannish culture that will die for it's members with an international tribal structure that will die for it's members..... Vampires pretty much piss off anyone and everyone they know from day one and it only gets worse with every decade until even their kids want to shishkebab them and devour the remains.... good luck taking on a team of uberkillers dropping out of anouther dimension with no warning led by a burning God onto your comatose ass...

Moriato
2009-10-25, 04:37 PM
Unless the avatar of the sun doesn't feel like being your bitch. It probably doesn't. You're going to have to be a bit more than rank 1 to get a spirit that powerful to even listen to you.

A vampire with auspex can see you coming from the umbra, and one with enough auspex can enter and leave it even easier than a werewolf can.

Vampires have their own groups, they're called coteries or packs.

As far as shrugging off disciplines using gifts... what gifts? I've never seen these gifts, apparently

What gift is going to let you shrug off the obfuscated, celerity-using vampire with an uzi full of silver bullets?

mostlyharmful
2009-10-25, 04:49 PM
Unless the avatar of the sun doesn't feel like being your bitch. It probably doesn't. You're going to have to be a bit more than rank 1 to get a spirit that powerful to even listen to you.

A vampire with auspex can see you coming from the umbra, and one with enough auspex can enter and leave it even easier than a werewolf can.

Vampires have their own groups, they're called coteries or packs.

As far as shrugging off disciplines using gifts... what gifts? I've never seen these gifts, apparently

Nope. reread the summoning rules, with a specced towards mystic rites theurge (best way to go given their role in a pack) you can summon as well as any elder. After that you just increase the casting time of the rite, it's written right into the rules, the longer you dedicate to it the easier it is until you're pretty much certain (unless you roll ten straight 1s in which case you only end up with two successes) of conjuring up a dedicated to your benefit GOD!!!!! It's like epic casting right out of the gate and it's still not as broken as Mage.

No a vampire with Auspex can't see the Umbra, he can perceive the Astral Umbra not the Middle Umbra if he concentrates.... you need a path of Thaumaturgy power to see the Middle Umbra and even then you've got to specifically activate it (something rather hard to do at two in the afternoon).

They are indeed called Coteries for the most part, those are the ones bound together in the young for entirely selfinterest reasons since their elders will eat them dead if they don't have some kind of backup.. how far do you think that self interest extends? I'm fairly sure the Pack/Sept/Tribe system beats it hands down every time without trying... Sabbat Packs will stay together but the Valauderie breaks the instant each packmate dies whereapon they're in it to survive, best bet for that is to run and hide and try not to draw attention.

The level Four Silver Fang mindblock and the Silent Strider Dam the Heartflood are the two that stand out, the Child of Gaia one that turns you into a living sun is also good for a laugh, and if all else fails you can just go for broke and frenzy... plus you've almost certainly got multiple Garou attacking at once so only Presence is likely to keep them off you and that's resistable with Willpower points.

Moriato
2009-10-25, 04:50 PM
In all honesty, combat in the old world of darkness basically comes down to "he who goes first, wins".

Werewolf wins initiative, he blows his rage and tears you apart

Vampire wins initiative, he dominates you or bites you and you paralyzed, or uses whatever other discipline he's good at, and kill you with it.

Mage wins initiative, you are now a lawn chair. Game over

Changling wins initiative... they dance around for a while... werewolf and vampire and mage get bored and leave, changling wins.. I guess

Mummy wins initiative, everyone at the table laughs at you for playing a mummy, they leave to start their own group, and since it's only you at the table, I guess you win there, too.

mostlyharmful
2009-10-25, 04:57 PM
In all honesty, combat in the old world of darkness basically comes down to "he who goes first, wins".

Werewolf wins initiative, he blows his rage and tears you apart

Vampire wins initiative, he dominates you or bites you and you paralyzed, or uses whatever other discipline he's good at, and kill you with it.

Mage wins initiative, you are now a lawn chair. Game over.

Yes.. except Werewolves get the drop when they're attacking from another dimension and they get warnings from their spirit allies if you're attacking their homeground. With teamwork, a perfect sneakattack/retreat route, better combat stats and more varied/effective supernatural powers Garou just kick Cainite ass. up, down and sideways.

LongVin
2009-10-25, 05:40 PM
I had my players fight werewolves in 2 seperate sessions(the plots were linked though.)

In the first session they were sent by their boss(who was a thousand year old Tremere who had a vendetta against werewolves because they killed his one true love) to negoitate a truce with the werewolves.

The peace talks went bady after the Malkavaian who was speaking insulted Gaia. Basically, the Malkavian kept harrassing them to tell him more about Gaia. Meanwhile the Malkavian was possessed by the spirit of the player's previous character a Salubri little girl who was very worldwise. The Salubri personality managed to take over and gave a very insightful description about Gaia to the other players...the werewolves thought he was just making fun of them.

Fight ensues, players are taken off guard and are captured(the werewolves had a plan for them) Basically, the players were in a situation not to their making, and were taken off guard. They didn't stand a chance.

The next session picks up with the players captured in the werewolves lair(a cave system) now the players had to fight their way out. Which quicly turned into getting the drop on them while they were in human or wolf form, moving quickly and trying to take the werewolves off guard. This helped alot and allowed them to get out of the lair with only minimal casualities(the only major one was self inflicted by the player.) It also didn't hurt that one of the players managed to drink the blood of a werewolf which is much more potent and gave him some insane abilities for awhile(I don't remember if this was in the rules of V:tM or if I houseruled the effects in.)


EDIT: As for the issue of the werewolf just jumping into the Umbra and emerging back into the Vampire's Haven. It might not work that easily. The Umbra isn't like jumping on the train and just going to the next station. There are challenges in the Umbra that are actually even more capable of killing a werewolf than anything else. Also the Umbra isn't a direct physical parrallel to the if I may borrow a term the prime material plane. What might just be an old house in the world in the Umbra can be a foreboding fortress with wraiths gathered about. It depends on the owner in the real world, what actions have occured in the house and a host of other features.

mostlyharmful
2009-10-25, 05:44 PM
It also didn't hurt that one of the players managed to drink the blood of a werewolf which is much more potent and gave him some insane abilities for awhile(I don't remember if this was in the rules of V:tM or if I houseruled the effects in.)

There is a rule about potence and celerity abilities from pure bloods but the more you drink the more sure you are to frenzy (each blood point is a -1 on the roll).... and did you use the rage to stay concious and instantly turn to frenzied Crinos or the spirit allies or the hypersenses of the lupus Garou or the kinfolf installed security system or the pack spirit totem awareness of damage to it's members? or anything?

Edit: No the Umbra isn't a direct collerilatory, that's what high Gnosis Theurges are for, with spirit allies and high Cosmology to negotiate to right on top of the bloodsuckers and then drop their whole pack into it instantly.

LongVin
2009-10-25, 05:53 PM
The session was awhile ago so I don't remember exactly what I threw at them, but I threw alot of crazy stuff at them. I went through the Werewolf sourcebook the week before to get some goodies out if(we were never really into werewolf.) And they only managed to actually kill 1 werewolf(others were hurt in the process though) in the whole encounter the one that was bloodsucked...whose character then raged a short while later and caused a major incident involving a city bus.

Dixieboy
2009-10-25, 06:47 PM
A rank 2 Black Fury can do enough Aggravated damage with a single claw hit that an Antediluvian with Stamina 10 + Fortitude 10 won't even need to roll dice. No.
Just... no
Basic math says no.
Logic says no.
Also:
Presence 10:
Instant world domination.
Obfuscate: This guy can CHOOSE whether he wants to exist or not.
Potence 10: 10 auto strength successes, that'd be enough to tear the skull off a rank 2 werewolf.
Dominate 10: Mindslave.
Fortitude 10: You can't deal damage to it, firearms are absorbed, it can take a grenade to the face and shrug it off.
Thaumaturgy 10: Rape
Dementation 10: See above
Auspex: Yea, I'm sniping you, from Australia.
Chimerstry: Sooo, which one of the 600 billion vampires standing around you is the real one? You wouldn't know because you're stuck in an eternal nightmare.
Vicissitude 10: :smalleek:
Serpentis 10: Your blood has just been replaced with venom, have fun.
Celerity 10: Stop... hammertime (Or: You literarily can't touch this.)
Necromancy 10: You, your brood, your family, your families brood, everyone they are related to? Their souls have just been eaten.
{Scrubbed}


It's pretty much unkillable, and if it touches you, you die forever, and it has automatic free Celerity. So basically, you'll be fighting Wolverine. If he had magic powers, moved like a character from the Matrix, and could come at you from another dimension. Wolverine of Tindalos, basically, only scarier, faster and much, much stronger.A rank 2 werewolf can't do anything of that really.
Well except for the killing you.
They are really good at that.


The key to hunting werewolves is to *not* hunt werewolves. They are death machines. Take a 180 lb. man and combine it with a 90 lb. wolf, and you get something that's about the size of a killer whale with legs that irrationally hates you even though vampires really haven't ever done anything to warrant that hate (it's religious for the lupines, which means it doesn't really have to make sense).Except not really, they tolerate the gangrel due to their similar nature.
There's also that group of hunters who kills vampires for zeh lulz.


Even if you kill it, with like, a LAW rocket or something, it can blow a point of something to not die and just get a battle scar. It's not worth it. Vampires are paralyzed and helpless 50% of the time, and Werewolves can move through a dimension that vampires don't even know exist, allowing them to come wandering into your Haven at high noon, circumventing whatever defensive measures you have, and kill you while you are making a Humanity roll to see if you can wake up before dying.Except the umbra doesn't work like that, a tremere can set up about a billion defences against it, and a giovanni can insta-**** you up if you try that stuff in their haven.


If you want to survive a fight with a werewolf, take Celerity, and shoot it a bazillion times, combining Celerity actions with split dice pool actions. Using celerity to run like hells might seem like a better solution, but if your ST has put you up against a werewolf, he obviously meant for you to face a werewolf. Werewolves run faster, can track many times better than you, can smell the presence of vampires, and can dig you up in the middle of the day, no matter how deeply you burrow into the ground. Except if you are a gangrel, a teremere or brought security measures.
Running isn't much of an option. The true brujah laughs at that preprosterous claim.


Going claw-to-claw with them is crazy. Anyone who even tries that deserves death anyway.
A Tzimisce needs to spend all three of his starting discipline points, and then *ten game sessions worth of experience points* to enter a combat form that is *not as good* as what a a Garou starts out with, *for free.*Which is why that the Tzimiche are more of an "Evil overlord" type of clan.
angrel? No. You'd need Fortitude 5 to have a *chance* of surviving a single hit,Show me the math behind this, fortitude 5 is 5 damage dies removed, assuming that this is a fairly average werewolf he won't be dishing out ANY more than 6-7 a hit.
That's 2 damage dice, which can both be passed or whatever it's called, and even if they do pass the guy will STILL BE ALIVE.
Not well, and he won't win the fight.
But he'll be alive, and probably ready to take one or two more hits.


For the same reason that a Tremere shouldn't get into a spell-tossing battle with a member of the Order of Hermes, a Gangrel shouldn't get in a melee fight with a Garou.A tremere can actually quite easily win that battle.
They have waaaay, waaaaay, waaaaaay too many "If you get close to me you DIE!" techniques



The best, best, best bet? Play a Giovanni, Samedi, Kiasyd, Nagaraja or other Necromancy-user. Werewolves were designed to surgically dismember anything a Vampire could do, and have access to unbeatable physical combat abilities, the ability to sniff out vampires, the ability to travel through worlds vampires can't even perceive, and, oh yeah, 12 more hours a day, when the vampire is paralyzed, to do whatever they want. So hit them with Wraiths, who can kill them from beyond the Shroud. If they can use rules from another splatbook against which Kindred have no defense, turn the tables and do the same thing to them.This is pretty solid advice.
But the umbra is not a thing the vampire cannot percieve.
The giovanni messes with the umbra for the lulz, just as the do the veil.


Vampires pretty much were designed to lose against any other supernatural in a stand-up fight.{Scrubbed}
Mages were designed for that.
Mages can with enough time on their hand become invincible.
But they need time.
One hit, one bite, one spell is all it takes.
They are afterall mortals.

Same rule applies for killing their kinfolk or burning down their forests or organizing a wolf-kill in the state. That stuff just pisses them off, it doesn't take one single measly die out of their dice-pools. One Garou, if it really wanted to, could kill every vampire in a city, probably in a single day (although it would take a week or so for it to figure out where they all lived, depending on it's particular supernatural senses / umbral reconnoitering skills). Getting every Garou in the state pissed at you is just a competition to see whose claws you die on first. {Scrubbed}
Firstly I'd love to see him track down all the nosferatu AT ALL, in a single day would be impossible.
Then he'd need to stand up to the barrage of pwnage that gonna happen when he busts into the bar where the local brujah hang out.


Additionally, no matter how connected your Ventrue thinks he is, the Garou also have business minded werewolves, so cunning plans involving razing Caerns or deporting kinfolk or culling wolves may end up killed at the legislative level, as your Ventrue discovers that he has now pissed off the *city werewolves,* who have been more or less peacefully co-existing alongside his kind for years.The city werewolves are not nearly as adept at dealing with that sort of bussiness as a ventrue.
Why?
One word:
Presence.
One more:
Dominate.
Being a shrewd bussinessman won't help you when the opponent has mind control.


I'd recommend only ever fighting werewolves if forced by the ST, and then only fighting them defensively. Don't go after them. More will show up, as they send out the word, and then, not only will you have dozens of werewolves coming from all over the country to kick your pasty white buttocks into a whole new shape, you'll also have whatever Kindred leader rules your area pissed at you for bringing this furry tempest into his house
{Scrubbed}The garou CAN call for support, but who the hell will help them?
The different kinds of garou can't agree on anything (And are in fact infighting almost as much as the vampires), the other shapeshifters (Or whatever) hates their guts,
The chances of the garou launching a serious, planned, strategic assault on a city to take it from the kindred are about as slim as the European vampires coming over for a visit.
And fyi:
If the European vampires do that the garou can do nothing but cry.

ravenkith
2009-10-25, 08:20 PM
You know how a vampire hunts a werewolf?

He pays/mind controls someone else to do it for him, while he himself is located on an entirely different continent, with at least 15 witnesses to provide him with an alibi.

Riffington
2009-10-25, 08:36 PM
Ever notice how Garou rule the woods and Vampires rule the cities? There's a reason. It's not just that the vampires have mortal servants in the cities (though this is true and strong). It's also that the cool umbra tricks are useful in the woods but not in the city. Cities have been corrupted by man and vampire alike, and are full of banes and other spirits that are quite hostile to Garou. Do not count on walking in the umbra in a wyrm-tainted place unmolested; many vampire havens are in rather nasty areas, spiritually speaking. Even the Bone Gnawers (pathetic and twisted from their years in the city) try to keep to the parks.


As for mages, it totally depends on power level because the mage rules are borked. The difference between 3 dots in Forces (your fireball is as good as a rifle) and 6 (Manhattan Project) is rather unfortunate. But a lot of people overestimate mages because while they technically can do all sorts of things, the DC's and number of successes may often be prohibitive.

Roland St. Jude
2009-10-25, 08:46 PM
Sheriff of Moddingham: Please keep it civil in here. It should be possible to disagree with others without resorting to personal attacks or insulting characterizations of each others' comments.

Fax Celestis
2009-10-25, 09:32 PM
Ever notice how Garou rule the woods and Vampires rule the cities? There's a reason. It's not just that the vampires have mortal servants in the cities (though this is true and strong). It's also that the cool umbra tricks are useful in the woods but not in the city. Cities have been corrupted by man and vampire alike, and are full of banes and other spirits that are quite hostile to Garou. Do not count on walking in the umbra in a wyrm-tainted place unmolested; many vampire havens are in rather nasty areas, spiritually speaking. Even the Bone Gnawers (pathetic and twisted from their years in the city) try to keep to the parks.

This is true until you come to the Glass Walkers.

Given ample preparation time, four vampires should be able to handily take out a werewolf with equal XP without cheese (and by cheese I mean like being a Potence 5 Nosferatu with Oversized Fangs, Blunt Teeth, and Long Tusks for lolaggravated bite attacks out the gate). Similarly, four werewolves should be able to handle a mage. Four mages can handle a demon. Four hunters can handle a vampire.

It's your basic "rule of four". It's not entirely accurate, but it certainly is a good approximation.

In this particular instance, certain vampiric bloodlines have advantages that others don't (Ravnos have Fortitude and Chimerstry--Horrid Reality can mess someone up, man; Salubri antitribu get an agg-dealing holy sword at Valeren 2 and get Fortitude; City Gangrel and Tlacique get agg damage at Protean 2 and get Obfuscate and either Celerity or Presence; Tzimisce get an agg-dealer at Vicissitude 3; Tremere get Lure of Flames and Path of the Leavenbolt for ranged agg; True Brujah get to tinker with time; Giovanni get Potence, Necromancy, and with the right merit Fortitude), but more often than not you're better off running. Werewolves are built to specifically destroy the beasts of the Wyrm, of which vampires are a part of. It's possible, but it's a losing battle and not one I would willingly take with any sort of attachment to my character.

If I were to do it, I'd play a City Gangrel myself for Protean/Obfuscate/Celerity: Claws of the Beast, Celerity, and invisibility combined is about as potent as you're going to get. Trade some basic knowledge of Obfuscate or Protean for Fortitude and/or Potence (preferably both) from a Brujah, Lasombra, Nosferatu, Ravnos, Giovanni, or Ventrue to give yourself a fighting chance, and don't forget that you're constantly armed with an agg-dealing bite attack. And then pray.

Nostri
2009-10-25, 10:59 PM
The best way the kill a werewolf as a vampire is with a high powered anti-vehicle sniper rifle loaded with custom silver rounds. You know, the kind that are meant to blow holes in tank armor. That way when you blow the dinner plate sized hole through their chest they have to pay attention instead of shrugging it off as a battle scar.

A claymore mine might work if you customized it so that the shrapnel/ball bearings that flew out of it were silver instead of steel.

Getting the 4th level power in the Necromantic Path of Bones. "Hey you over there, big and fuzzy. Yeah you. Guess what? I rip out your soul." Granted this doesn't kill but just makes the body go into a coma it's really easy after that, you just walk over and cut their heads off. This is much easier if you've got a silver knife otherwise they still do their whole auto-healing schtick.

ShneekeyTheLost
2009-10-25, 11:44 PM
It's really pathetically easy to kill off werewolves as a Vampire. You just don't do it yourself.

You use your contacts to get an APB on them with the local police, then when they start tearing up the local police because they don't want to be arrested, you secretly replace the SWAT team with a crack Werewolf Hunter team, and maybe a H.I.T. or three you purchased. Then go dig up the local Greater Wyrm Spirit and let IT deal with their Caern.

Meanwhile, you are on another continent, sipping blood in your executive suite, and chatting with other vampires about serious matters whilst your minions are taking care of the minor nuisance.

Also, unless you have a Grand Klaive (an exceedingly rare Rank 5 Fetish), you are NOT going to be even affecting anything with that much Fortitude. Even then, good luck.

Fax Celestis
2009-10-25, 11:50 PM
It's really pathetically easy to kill off werewolves as a Vampire. You just don't do it yourself.

You use your contacts to get an APB on them with the local police, then when they start tearing up the local police because they don't want to be arrested, you secretly replace the SWAT team with a crack Werewolf Hunter team, and maybe a H.I.T. or three you purchased. Then go dig up the local Greater Wyrm Spirit and let IT deal with their Caern.

Meanwhile, you are on another continent, sipping blood in your executive suite, and chatting with other vampires about serious matters whilst your minions are taking care of the minor nuisance.

Also, unless you have a Grand Klaive (an exceedingly rare Rank 5 Fetish), you are NOT going to be even affecting anything with that much Fortitude. Even then, good luck.

Not all vampires are Ventrue. Or Giovanni. Or Lasombra.

ShneekeyTheLost
2009-10-26, 12:05 AM
Not all vampires are Ventrue. Or Giovanni. Or Lasombra.

Hell, I've got a Bruja who can do it. Mind you, I just built him, he's got zero experience earned so far. Of course, most of his contacts are Underworld/Judicial, but hey... not too hard to put a hit out on someone. So a drive-by with silver bullets, ought to be enough to take out any lycan easy.

KillianHawkeye
2009-10-26, 12:28 AM
The vampire's main advantage against werewolves is that there are a lot more vampires. Also, rocket launchers. :smallwink:

And as afraid as the vamps are of an entire sept of Garou uniting against them, don't forget that the Garou are just as afraid of a unified city full of vampires. Such a war would be bad for either side. That's why most vampire/werewolf encounters end up playing out more like black ops. Neither side is going to want to drop their guerrilla war in favor of the frickin' crusades.

Both sides' answer to a raid is to just plan more raids, because nobody wants escalation. The vamps don't want all-out war because it'll risk the Masquerade. The lupines don't want it because they have way more enemies than just vampires to worry about and can't devote all their resources to a single cause (or at least can't agree on any single cause to devote all their resources to). And so the conflict will continue as a series of small skirmishes until one side finds a way to gain an overwhelming advantage.

mostlyharmful
2009-10-26, 04:02 AM
Also, unless you have a Grand Klaive (an exceedingly rare Rank 5 Fetish), you are NOT going to be even affecting anything with that much Fortitude. Even then, good luck.

Fortitude doesn't work the way a whole lot of people in here seem to think it does. It gives you soak dice against aggravated damage, it allows you to roll SOME kind of defence against the basic Garou suite of claws and fangs... a vampire can't soak agg otherwise and they only get as many die as their have Fort so when a mid level Ahroun steps up to a Gangrel elder with five dots of Fortitude, rolls well and ladels out 12+ levels of damage on the hit (huge de+brawl roll with extra successes spilling over into damage combined with Str (10) +2 aggravated damage as the base) and yeah.... versus a guy with maybe five dice of Soak.... it's dust. And that's one of a pack. Versus about the toughest vampire you're likely to meet concious.


You use your contacts to get an APB on them with the local police, then when they start tearing up the local police because they don't want to be arrested, you secretly replace the SWAT team with a crack Werewolf Hunter team, and maybe a H.I.T. or three you purchased. Then go dig up the local Greater Wyrm Spirit and let IT deal with their Caern.

Bye-Bye Masquerade, I think the Elders would have a problem with anyone being this heavyhanded, the Veil pretty much takes care of itself supernaturally but once your influence results in multiple downtown blocks being leveled in a huge supernatural brawl with Spirits, Mages, Cyborgs, Werewolves, Ghouled SWAT and whatever your goose is cooked if the Camarilla ever catches up with you.


Getting the 4th level power in the Necromantic Path of Bones. "Hey you over there, big and fuzzy. Yeah you. Guess what? I rip out your soul." Granted this doesn't kill but just makes the body go into a coma it's really easy after that, you just walk over and cut their heads off. This is much easier if you've got a silver knife otherwise they still do their whole auto-healing schtick.

well, you'll need a few things there..

1. you'll need to see them coming
2. you'll need them to come one at a time
3. you'll need their spirit/soul to act just the same as a mundane humans, Mage rules you have to have both Spirit and Life Spheres to pull this kind of thing, supernaturals often react differently
4. You now have a huge great big target painted on your hide, your mates wont go to the wall for you, his will and there's an entire army of them...


No.
Just... no
Basic math says no.
Logic says no.
Also:
Presence 10:
Instant world domination.
Obfuscate: This guy can CHOOSE whether he wants to exist or not.
Potence 10: 10 auto strength successes, that'd be enough to tear the skull off a rank 2 werewolf.
Dominate 10: Mindslave.
Fortitude 10: You can't deal damage to it, firearms are absorbed, it can take a grenade to the face and shrug it off.
Thaumaturgy 10: Rape
Dementation 10: See above
Auspex: Yea, I'm sniping you, from Australia.
Chimerstry: Sooo, which one of the 600 billion vampires standing around you is the real one? You wouldn't know because you're stuck in an eternal nightmare.
Vicissitude 10: :smalleek:
Serpentis 10: Your blood has just been replaced with venom, have fun.
Celerity 10: Stop... hammertime (Or: You literarily can't touch this.)
Necromancy 10: You, your brood, your family, your families brood, everyone they are related to? Their souls have just been eaten.
{Scrubbed}

Yup. Discipline 10 has been out and out stated to do just about anything. That wasn't the point, the point was that a virtually brand new Garou can deal out enough damage to a target for it to matter, the Vamp can't just stand around (or lie around in a coma) cause it'll be ganked, it has to do something to protect itself. From the Garou equivilant of a moody teenager.


A rank 2 werewolf can't do anything of that really.
Well except for the killing you.
They are really good at that.

A rank 2 werewolf specced to combat can do all of that, an Ahroun with gifts and points spent in physical attributes and combat dice pool skills is frankly exactly that.


Except not really, they tolerate the gangrel due to their similar nature.
There's also that group of hunters who kills vampires for zeh lulz.

They tolerate the Gangrel because that's the WoD fluff, the mechanics say the Gangrel should have been wasted millennia ago. I don't know what your point is with the existence of the human vampire hunters except that half the time all vampires are weak and vulnerable...?



Except the umbra doesn't work like that, a tremere can set up about a billion defences against it, and a giovanni can insta-**** you up if you try that stuff in their haven.

Nope. Most Tremere stuff interacts with the Astral Umbra, ALL Giovanni stuff intereacts with the Dark Umbra, there are a few specialist Werewolves that can touch on those but mostly they go through the Middle Umbra which is an entirely seperate other dimension. And when they step out they're just as likely to have summoned friends that can handle the vampires tricks as the vampires are to have some nice surprises, that's a contest the vampires have to win every time for centuries, the Garou only have to win once since they're fine with dying in holy combat for love, apple pie and all that.


Except if you are a gangrel, a teremere or brought security measures. The true brujah laughs at that preprosterous claim.

Security measures do squat to a bunch of superkillers dropping out of another dimension with a pet God, Gangrel can't Soak a single hit from a single Garou let alone take on five at the same time that's just how the respective combat systems works. and The True Brujah (of which there's like 25 in the world) have to stop at sunrise just like allllll the rest. Plus stretching time costs blood, they can't keep it up forever and basic pack hunting will wear them out eventually if the Garou can't be bothered to wait five hours until they're in a coma.


Anyone who even tries that deserves death anyway. Which is why that the Tzimiche are more of an "Evil overlord" type of clan.

Which only matters when you've got something in the arsenal worth fighting and some way to protect yourself from being tracked down and burned out.


Show me the math behind this, fortitude 5 is 5 damage dies removed, assuming that this is a fairly average werewolf he won't be dishing out ANY more than 6-7 a hit.
That's 2 damage dice, which can both be passed or whatever it's called, and even if they do pass the guy will STILL BE ALIVE.
Not well, and he won't win the fight.
But he'll be alive, and probably ready to take one or two more hits.

Ah. The problem is that vampires can only soak Aggravated damage with Fortitude so that 5 dice pool is all they get. And it's not automatically successful like Potence so only 1 in 2 soaks which means you're taking off 2 or 3 successes per hit. Now an Ahroun specced for combat will have dice pools to hit of 9 or 10 and damage pools of extra successes + Strength (10/11) + 1 claw damage +1 sharpened claw damage + miscellaneous gift/pack bonusses (say +1/2) so you're looking at around 5 or 6 aggravated damage AFTER soaking it with an elders Fortitude. And that's just one hit from a guy making 5+ attacks this round, who's part of a pack.... And that's the elder that's pumped Fort as high as he can...


A tremere can actually quite easily win that battle.
They have waaaay, waaaaay, waaaaaay too many "If you get close to me you DIE!" techniques

They do have some. Garou also have some. It comes down to a bit of a gamble on both sides between a pack and an elder tremere, thing is the vamps got to win every time to keep going, Garou just have to win once since without a few hundred years experience Tremere aren't anything special, just like all vampires.


This is pretty solid advice.
But the umbra is not a thing the vampire cannot percieve.
The giovanni messes with the umbra for the lulz, just as the do the veil.

Nope. That's the Dark Umbra, different kettle of fish, there's a few Silver Fangs and Silent Strider experts that'll go there and do stuff a Giovanni can interact with but most Garou are on a different plane of existence. The Tremere have a path that gives them some small chance to affect the Middle Umbra but it's a really bad idea since they're then tredding on Werewolf holy ground and are moving up the list of 'things to be ganked' rapidly.


{Scrubbed}
Mages were designed for that.
Mages can with enough time on their hand become invincible.
But they need time.
One hit, one bite, one spell is all it takes.
They are afterall mortals.{Scrubbed}
Firstly I'd love to see him track down all the nosferatu AT ALL, in a single day would be impossible.
Then he'd need to stand up to the barrage of pwnage that gonna happen when he busts into the bar where the local brujah hang out.

They can hide on another plane of existence between hunts, Nossies can't. Their spirits don't care about Obfuscate (doesn't cross the Perifery) and can trace them by their Wyrmscent.... and when the pack bursts into the Brujah bar... it's broad daylight and all the dead tough guys are napping and unresponsive.


The city werewolves are not nearly as adept at dealing with that sort of bussiness as a ventrue.
Why?
One word:
Presence.
One more:
Dominate.
Being a shrewd bussinessman won't help you when the opponent has mind control.

Garou get mindcontrol aswell, not to the same extent but then they get to work during daylight hours, call in strikes from teams of uberkillers and summon technospirits to do their bidding. Good luck with one on one dominate when all the computers in the city are run by Weaver spirits that the local Glasswalkers own.



{Scrubbed}The garou CAN call for support, but who the hell will help them?

Spirits. Caern/Sept-mates. Tribemates. allied Caern/septs... anyone they convince that said vamp is a nasty little stain on the carpet. They might have had arguments back in the day but in a modern setting there's a whole lot more co-operation since they're under pressure from things far more scarey than vampires (which is probably the better reason vamps are still around, the Garou have bigger fish to fry).


The different kinds of garou can't agree on anything (And are in fact infighting almost as much as the vampires), the other shapeshifters (Or whatever) hates their guts,

So don't go to them, there's almost none left anyway. Just go to your own Sept or Tribe or call in your own Totems, there's plenty of allies out there if you just pick the right people rather than the wrong ones.


The chances of the garou launching a serious, planned, strategic assault on a city to take it from the kindred are about as slim as the European vampires coming over for a visit.

Yep. They've got bigger problems in the Umbra and with rogue Garou tribes going over to the wyrm and corrupt things popping out of the woodwork to worry too much about vamps, so don't draw the attention and most cainites get to survive.


And fyi:
If the European vampires do that the garou can do nothing but cry.

Until daybreak. When they summon an Avatar of the Sun to be their point man as they drop out of another dimension onto said euro-trashes face. And then Dam the Heartflood, claws and Fangs, fire and it's ash on the wind.

TroubleBrewing
2009-10-26, 04:14 AM
Didn't even bother to read any of the other responses, and with good reason: in VtM, there is no reason to play any clan aside from Ventrue. Dominate is the most unimaginably powerful ability in the game. Why kill the werewolf when you can Dominate him and steal his body nigh-permanently?

mostlyharmful
2009-10-26, 04:16 AM
Didn't even bother to read any of the other responses, and with good reason: in VtM, there is no reason to play any clan aside from Ventrue. Dominate is the most unimaginably powerful ability in the game. Why kill the werewolf when you can Dominate him and steal his body nigh-permanently?

Because you've got to meet his eyes to do it? And he's got friends around him that will rip you a new one if you try?

Riffington
2009-10-26, 07:57 AM
Didn't even bother to read any of the other responses, and with good reason: in VtM, there is no reason to play any clan aside from Ventrue. Dominate is the most unimaginably powerful ability in the game. Why kill the werewolf when you can Dominate him and steal his body nigh-permanently?

One thing a lot of you are forgetting is that the rules for how one species interacts with another is only semidefined. If you are playing a Vampire game, different powers work on werewolves than if you are playing a Werewolf game.

So in a Vampire game, Dominate doesn't work on a vampire of stronger blood than you. Likewise, it doesn't work on powerful werewolves. (In a werewolf game, it's probably much more likely to affect werewolves, of course.)
Dominate is a wonderful power. It gives you minions. But it doesn't work nearly as well on the biggest badasses. It also is on occasion unreliable; those who rely on Dominate too heavily die unexpectedly.
Ventrue are awesome, but the smart ones use Dominate judiciously. It makes a much better scalpel than hatchet.

Dixieboy
2009-10-26, 08:29 AM
Yup. Discipline 10 has been out and out stated to do just about anything. That wasn't the point, the point was that a virtually brand new Garou can deal out enough damage to a target for it to matter, the Vamp can't just stand around (or lie around in a coma) cause it'll be ganked, it has to do something to protect itself. From the Garou equivilant of a moody teenager.
And if the garou just stands around he'll be pwned by a single bite..




They tolerate the Gangrel because that's the WoD fluff, the mechanics say the Gangrel should have been wasted millennia ago. I don't know what your point is with the existence of the human vampire hunters except that half the time all vampires are weak and vulnerable...?Ehmm
I meant werewolf hunters. :smallredface:





Nope. Most Tremere stuff interacts with the Astral Umbra, ALL Giovanni stuff intereacts with the Dark Umbra, there are a few specialist Werewolves that can touch on those but mostly they go through the Middle Umbra which is an entirely seperate other dimension. And when they step out they're just as likely to have summoned friends that can handle the vampires tricks as the vampires are to have some nice surprises, that's a contest the vampires have to win every time for centuries, the Garou only have to win once since they're fine with dying in holy combat for love, apple pie and all that.Question: Can they really safely go through the umbra in such a heavily wyrm tainted area?

Actually the vampire only has to win once, when he's killed the werewolf he probably already has a new adress ready.


True Brujah (of which there's like 25 in the world) have to stop at sunrise just like allllll the rest. Plus stretching time costs blood, they can't keep it up forever and basic pack hunting will wear them out eventually if the Garou can't be bothered to wait five hours until they're in a coma.At which point they'll be so far away that the Werewolves chances of ever catching up are basically 0.




Which only matters when you've got something in the arsenal worth fighting and some way to protect yourself from being tracked down and burned out. You're an evil overlord, you don't go out and try to murder stuff yourself., and if you do you bring backup.



Ah. The problem is that vampires can only soak Aggravated damage with Fortitude so that 5 dice pool is all they get. And it's not automatically successful like Potence so only 1 in 2 soaks which means you're taking off 2 or 3 successes per hit. Now an Ahroun specced for combat will have dice pools to hit of 9 or 10 and damage pools of extra successes + Strength (10/11) + 1 claw damage +1 sharpened claw damage + miscellaneous gift/pack bonusses (say +1/2) so you're looking at around 5 or 6 aggravated damage AFTER soaking it with an elders Fortitude. And that's just one hit from a guy making 5+ attacks this round, who's part of a pack.... And that's the elder that's pumped Fort as high as he can...




They do have some. Garou also have some. It comes down to a bit of a gamble on both sides between a pack and an elder tremere, thing is the vamps got to win every time to keep going, Garou just have to win once since without a few hundred years experience Tremere aren't anything special, just like all vampires.Their clan weakness can be summed up as "We stick together".
That seems mighty special.
Besides, all the tremere needs is one drop of blood and they can mess you up something fierce.




They can hide on another plane of existence between hunts, Nossies can't. Their spirits don't care about Obfuscate (doesn't cross the Perifery) and can trace them by their Wyrmscent.... and when the pack bursts into the Brujah bar... it's broad daylight and all the dead tough guys are napping and unresponsive.
A vampire does not go comatose at sunrise, he just gets groggy.



Garou get mindcontrol aswell, not to the same extent but then they get to work during daylight hours, call in strikes from teams of uberkillers and summon technospirits to do their bidding. Good luck with one on one dominate when all the computers in the city are run by Weaver spirits that the local Glasswalkers own.Oh no, screw that.
The venture will just invite your dude to a meeting, gameover.
Presence cannot be rolled against, which means you'll have to spend willpower for quite a bit of time, leaving you a sobbing husk once it's over.





Spirits. Caern/Sept-mates. Tribemates. allied Caern/septs... anyone they convince that said vamp is a nasty little stain on the carpet. They might have had arguments back in the day but in a modern setting there's a whole lot more co-operation since they're under pressure from things far more scarey than vampires (which is probably the better reason vamps are still around, the Garou have bigger fish to fry). not to forget that most werewolves deal terribly with city life, vampires do better amongst mortals, werewolves are almost extinct.




So don't go to them, there's almost none left anyway. Just go to your own Sept or Tribe or call in your own Totems, there's plenty of allies out there if you just pick the right people rather than the wrong ones.Wouldn't they be a little bit too busy with y'know, the wyrm to care about your little blood feud with a leech?




Yep. They've got bigger problems in the Umbra and with rogue Garou tribes going over to the wyrm and corrupt things popping out of the woodwork to worry too much about vamps, so don't draw the attention and most cainites get to survive. And stay in the cities, and if you draw their ire use your brains instead of trying to murder them.




Until daybreak. When they summon an Avatar of the Sun to be their point man as they drop out of another dimension onto said euro-trashes face. And then Dam the Heartflood, claws and Fangs, fire and it's ash on the wind.If we go that high level we'll just have the entire place warded by the tremere.
No, they can't just phase in through the umbra if it's warded.

mostlyharmful
2009-10-26, 03:18 PM
And if the garou just stands around he'll be pwned by a single bite..

yeah they would. The point was about a low level Garou damage output not their likelyhood at surviving in combat with a ten thousand year old grandchilde of Caine.


Ehmm
I meant werewolf hunters. :smallredface:

Could well work, if they get the drop on the werewolves and don't mind dying in droves on the off chance that one of them rolls badly on their Rage rolls to stay active when shot full of silver buckshot.


Question: Can they really safely go through the umbra in such a heavily wyrm tainted area?

They can after dedicating some effort to clearing of the hellhole. They can be working on them for weeks cleaning up the Penumbra without alerting anything in the material world since it doesn't show up.


Actually the vampire only has to win once, when he's killed the werewolf he probably already has a new adress ready.

Which can be tracked down through spirit allies which he can do nothing whatsoever about.


At which point they'll be so far away that the Werewolves chances of ever catching up are basically 0.

Unless they've got supersenses, supernatural gifts, spirit minions, Kinfolk allies in the Police/media, etc..... tracking things down is literally a second level Ragabash gift that just about every pack has access to, once they know what they're looking for there's nothing that'll stop them. Ever.


You're an evil overlord, you don't go out and try to murder stuff yourself., and if you do you bring backup.

Ok. So what do you send?


Their clan weakness can be summed up as "We stick together".
That seems mighty special.

Seems mighty good to me, same is true of tribes of Garou, Septs, Packs.... Plus the ''Stick together'' thing is only so long as you're organizationally useful. Being the target of successive waves of Garou assassination attempts would rapidly demote any vamp from 'useful asset' to 'frikken liability'.


Besides, all the tremere needs is one drop of blood and they can mess you up something fierce.

Garou don't even need that with spirit allies. Your face, your name, your address, your close minions, whatever.... they can target you just on the basis your haircut if they summon up the right Jaggling.


A vampire does not go comatose at sunrise, he just gets groggy.

Reread the rules on staying concious and useful.. they get really sucky really really fast and go unconcious pretty much automatically after a couple of minutes and waking up takes a humanity roll under dire stimulus (like sunlight or the smell of fire), the higher your humanity the more likely you are to wake up and the less likely you are to be the target of a serious assassination attempt. If you're a monster vamp then you just aren't going to wake up until you're already ganked by a dozen claw attacks.


Oh no, screw that.
The venture will just invite your dude to a meeting, gameover.
Presence cannot be rolled against, which means you'll have to spend willpower for quite a bit of time, leaving you a sobbing husk once it's over.

Presence can't be rolled against by humans, supernatural on supernatural gets a bit fuzzy and spending a willpower point followed by a rage point to turn to Crinos followed by rolling to voluntarily go to frenzy would soon stop the 'hostile takeover' in favour of 'corporate negotiations with extreme prejudice'. Oh, and your Pack might have something to say about you wandering into a negotiation with a shady underground figure you know to be a Vamp with no backup or protection. Any social/city Garou that wanders into a meeting without any protection is an idiot and needs to be removed from the Sept post haste for the good of everybody.


not to forget that most werewolves deal terribly with city life, vampires do better amongst mortals, werewolves are almost extinct.

Numbers are a campaign thing, some are closer to extinction than others. Plus they don't actually need to spend much time in the city to track down and assassinate a vamp or fifty with spirit allies. Oh, and two solid tribes (one the most numerous short of the BSDers) get on fine in the big smoke.


Wouldn't they be a little bit too busy with y'know, the wyrm to care about your little blood feud with a leech?

Yup, that's when politics and negotiations kick in. You scratch mine and I'll scratch yours, this vamps a menace, you owe me one, etc..... That's why the 'stay inconspicuous and quiet' is a pretty good bet on surviving as a vamp, don't stand out or piss them off and you wont get a Garou hit squad to the face since they've got better things to do for the most part.



If we go that high level we'll just have the entire place warded by the tremere.
No, they can't just phase in through the umbra if it's warded.

This is a group of level one straight out of the character generator. Summon Spirits a level two rite and a theurge can be perfectly competant at it from creation, you're the one bringing multiple ancient european vamps into it, seeing as I'm in London I just assume they're there to begin with.

ravenkith
2009-10-26, 03:40 PM
Any vamp with half a brain would physically distance himself from any involvement with assassinating a werewolf.

He would use his resources, skills and powers to track down the usual local hangouts of said werewolf, hire some very patient, talented, and well coordinated sniper team to wait in said locations, armed with barrett light 50s with silver hollow points, having them simultaneously target and fire upon the werewolf.

He would use 50 or so different cutouts to arrange this (some mystical in nature), and at the end of the day would act completely normally whether the attempt failed or not.

Worst to worst, if he REALLY got into trouble, he'd just go take a walk on the bottom of the ocean for 50 years or so.

"Damn werewolves, always tromping around so loudly. How utterly gauche! I guess I'd better go work on constructing that undersea base again." <shrug>.

...and if anyone comes visiting the undersea base...he just takes a walk outside.

Granted, there are those shark-type garou, and the croc kind (hope he can hold his breath a LOOOONG time), but those are supposed to be even MORE limited in number than the regular garou to start with, and they would be limited as to what they could bring to bear (especially seeing as there isn't nearly as much expansion material printed for those garou types). Much more likely to be able to deal with

NPCMook
2009-10-26, 03:58 PM
All I can say Mostly, is that you have I believe 3 people telling you "no, it doesn't work like that," while you are the only one saying "yes, it does!" Which kind of points to you being the wrong one. I haven't read W:tA, or a whole lot of V:tM, but it seems you are pushing a lot that a Rank 2 Werewolf could probably beat Caine

Fax Celestis
2009-10-26, 04:01 PM
All I can say Mostly, is that you have I believe 3 people telling you "no, it doesn't work like that," while you are the only one saying "yes, it does!" Which kind of points to you being the wrong one. I haven't read W:tA, or a whole lot of V:tM, but it seems you are pushing a lot that a Rank 2 Werewolf could probably beat Caine

No one beats Caine. Caine's character sheet is more succint but approximately the same effect as Pun-Pun's. It only has one relevant ability: "I win". And yes, this is canon. See: Gehenna.

mostlyharmful
2009-10-26, 04:09 PM
All I can say Mostly, is that you have I believe 3 people telling you "no, it doesn't work like that," while you are the only one saying "yes, it does!" Which kind of points to you being the wrong one. I haven't read W:tA, or a whole lot of V:tM, but it seems you are pushing a lot that a Rank 2 Werewolf could probably beat Caine

then reread who brought up the rank 2 werewolf, it wasn't me and it wasn't about whether they could take an Antediluvian. It was about the standerd damage output of a Garou built around combat. Also, while one person in particular has been discussing it with me I don't think that proves anything, weight of numbers is a notoriously fickle beast when it comes to discussion.

Also, I have read W:tA, and V:tM and played and STed in both, and Mage, and done it for several years and run several crossovers based on each system. This is a discussion based on these two similar though conflicting oWoD systems, as such it would be nice if we had a little more crunch and a little less hyped fluff. but meh.

Riffington
2009-10-26, 04:38 PM
, as such it would be nice if we had a little more crunch and a little less hyped fluff. but meh.

The problem with "crunch" in V:tM is that it's very different in each edition (and everyone houserules anyway). For instance, I'm hearing the claim that you soak vs agg only with Fortitude; that's true in 3rd edition, but in 2nd (the one true edition), you just need one dot of Fortitude to soak with (Stamina+Fortitude). Similarly, depending on edition, Celerity is awesome or decent. Don't even get me started on the question of whether Ward vs Lupines is uber against Lupines or simply a minor inconvenience to them.

mostlyharmful
2009-10-26, 04:44 PM
The problem with "crunch" in V:tM is that it's very different in each edition (and everyone houserules anyway). For instance, I'm hearing the claim that you soak vs agg only with Fortitude; that's true in 3rd edition, but in 2nd (the one true edition), you just need one dot of Fortitude to soak with (Stamina+Fortitude). Similarly, depending on edition, Celerity is awesome or decent. Don't even get me started on the question of whether Ward vs Lupines is uber against Lupines or simply a minor inconvenience to them.

See now this is exactly the stuff... brilliant. I must admit I don't know much about editions before 3rd, haven't gamed it much so I wouldn't be able to talk about it with any kind of certainty.

That being said the problems in Garou/Cainite combat aren't so much in any particular discipline so much as the severe limitations each Vamp is under due to sun-sleep and non-access to the Umbra. After that you still need to sort out how summoned spirits can be dealt with.

Tokiko Mima
2009-10-26, 04:52 PM
All I can say Mostly, is that you have I believe 3 people telling you "no, it doesn't work like that," while you are the only one saying "yes, it does!" Which kind of points to you being the wrong one. I haven't read W:tA, or a whole lot of V:tM, but it seems you are pushing a lot that a Rank 2 Werewolf could probably beat Caine

That would be Argumentum ad populum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum). Merely because most people in this thread disagree with mostly, that does not automatically make him wrong. He has supported the idea that a relatively low level werewolf can do enough melee damage to kill a very very high level vampire in a single attack, and the math seems to work out. Anything else is putting words in his mouth.

comicshorse
2009-10-26, 06:09 PM
Question: Don't werewolves need a reflective surface to exit the Umbra from. So. given that, exactly what kind of idiot vampire keeps mirrors in his inner haven. Which kinda stops the whole ' Werewolves just drop in on you ' bit

Tiki Snakes
2009-10-26, 06:16 PM
Question: Don't werewolves need a reflective surface to exit the Umbra from. So. given that, exactly what kind of idiot vampire keeps mirrors in his inner haven. Which kinda stops the whole ' Werewolves just drop in on you ' bit

Water, polished marble, a tv screen, etc etc etc?

mostlyharmful
2009-10-26, 06:17 PM
Or a shaving mirror? such as you can carry around and attune to yourself with no problems? this is like limiting fireballs on the basis of how much guano an average bat can produce...

comicshorse
2009-10-26, 06:23 PM
Posted by Tiki Snakes

Water, polished marble, a tv screen, etc etc etc?

I'm pretty sure the surface has to be big enough for the garou to fit through.
Anyway you should have noted I said his INNER HAVEN. The one he sleeps in during the day, the one he doesn't need water, or a t.v, or anything in it because all he does is sleep there. The one cut off from the rest of his haven by the huge doors and probably flooded or full of poison gas if he has any sense

Posted by mostlyharmful

Or a shaving mirror? such as you can carry around and attune to yourself with no problems? this is like limiting fireballs on the basis of how much guano an average bat can produce...

Yes you carry it with you which means it might get you INTO the Umbra ( see previous comment about size) it won't get you OUT of the Umbra however

Riffington
2009-10-26, 06:25 PM
this is like limiting fireballs on the basis of how much guano an average bat can produce...

More like limiting assassination attempts against the President on the basis of how many rooftops the Secret Service can cover.

Shadwen
2009-10-26, 06:30 PM
I would need points to spend, rules of game, and books allowed...and is this larp or tabletop?

Bagelz
2009-10-26, 07:27 PM
There seems to be some disagreement among the posters and I have a pretty good idea why - editions:

if you are playing the current WOD (vamp: requiem, werewolf: forsaken) then things are much more balanced. While the werewolf has the edge in survivability and physical combat, the vamp has an advantage in resources.

if you are playing the older (was it 4th ed?) vamp: masquerade, and werewolf: apocalypse then the vamps have no chance. The older editions were stand alone and needed house rules to make them compatible let alone balanced.

either way, i think the best idea is max out firearms. stay away from physical combat.

KillianHawkeye
2009-10-26, 08:43 PM
There seems to be some disagreement among the posters and I have a pretty good idea why - editions:

if you are playing the current WOD (vamp: requiem, werewolf: forsaken) then things are much more balanced. While the werewolf has the edge in survivability and physical combat, the vamp has an advantage in resources.

if you are playing the older (was it 4th ed?) vamp: masquerade, and werewolf: apocalypse then the vamps have no chance. The older editions were stand alone and needed house rules to make them compatible let alone balanced.

either way, i think the best idea is max out firearms. stay away from physical combat.

This thread is about Vampire: the Masquerade, so nWoD material should be right out. Still, it's good advice for the vamps to rely on firearms (or heavier weapons) and stay out of melee whenever possible when facing the wolves.

ShneekeyTheLost
2009-10-26, 08:46 PM
There seems to be some disagreement among the posters and I have a pretty good idea why - editions:

if you are playing the current WOD (vamp: requiem, werewolf: forsaken) then things are much more balanced. While the werewolf has the edge in survivability and physical combat, the vamp has an advantage in resources.

if you are playing the older (was it 4th ed?) vamp: masquerade, and werewolf: apocalypse then the vamps have no chance. The older editions were stand alone and needed house rules to make them compatible let alone balanced.

either way, i think the best idea is max out firearms. stay away from physical combat.

I was talking Werewolf the Apocalypse vs Vampire the Masquerade...

Vamps are NOT pushovers. Not the least reason being their ability to soak Agg with Fortitude, auto-sucesses on damage dice with Potence, Celerity is more usable in combat than Rage Points (not to mention the possibility of entering a wyrm-tainted frenzy if you start popping rage points), and generally have access to lots and lots of silver bullets and lots and lots of mooks who shoot them at the lupines.

Vamps also have their escape routes. I don't care how well you can track people, Obfuscate still works perfectly well. Or you just go into places that your sense of smell works to their disadvantage (i.e. sewers). They can also use Celerity to move faster, thus run away faster.

Seriously, werewolf is easy to take down. Silver bullets, never fills you up, never lets you down. Also high on the list is silver-nitrate mace to blind them (and since it is silver damage, they can't simply 'make it a scar'), silver-loaded shotguns, napalm... when ya get down to it, lupines are pretty damn easy to kill.

One on one? Well... if a Vamp is going mano-a-mano with a Werewolf, he's already messed up, or he's seriously more badass than he appears to be.

But you won't ever catch a vamp one on one. Ghouls, slaves, servants... and silver bullets are cheap. Let the lupines bust in the front door. A few silver shotgun blasts to the face later, and there's no more problem.

tcrudisi
2009-10-27, 01:19 AM
Vamps are NOT pushovers. Not the least reason being their ability to soak Agg with Fortitude, auto-sucesses on damage dice with Potence, Celerity is more usable in combat than Rage Points (not to mention the possibility of entering a wyrm-tainted frenzy if you start popping rage points), and generally have access to lots and lots of silver bullets and lots and lots of mooks who shoot them at the lupines.

If you are talking "equal-level" of each, then Vamps are push-overs. Vampires start with 3 dots in disciplines... so that would be 3 in Fort, or 3 in Potence, or 3 in Celerity. Or perhaps 1 in each. Whereas all Werewolves start with lots of dots in "bad-ass". Also, yes werewolves can go into a Wyrm-tainted frenzy, but that doesn't really hurt a werewolf in a 1-on-1 fight. And silver bullets? First, I'd like to see your Werewolf Lore roll, please. Oh, didn't take it? Okay, I'll allow Occult to substitute in. I hope you took it high enough!

You passed it? Great. Then lets talk cash. Currently silver bullets cost $60/bullet. How many would you like? And what is your Resources rating again? Okay, you have Resources high enough to not screw yourself completely. Now, what's your Firearms rating?

See what just happened? You need a skill, a knowledge, and a background just to get silver bullets and use them effectively. What do werewolves need? Just to shift to Crinos to be able to do that "unsoakable aggravated damage" that you just had to spend a lot of character creation points on.


Vamps also have their escape routes. I don't care how well you can track people, Obfuscate still works perfectly well. Or you just go into places that your sense of smell works to their disadvantage (i.e. sewers). They can also use Celerity to move faster, thus run away faster.

If the vampire has Celerity, he doesn't have Fortitude. He was taken out in round 1 by the Werewolf that came out of the Umbra. Oh, your Vampire has Obfuscate? That's fine -- but that doesn't work so hot against the spirits.


Seriously, werewolf is easy to take down. Silver bullets, never fills you up, never lets you down. Also high on the list is silver-nitrate mace to blind them (and since it is silver damage, they can't simply 'make it a scar'), silver-loaded shotguns, napalm... when ya get down to it, lupines are pretty damn easy to kill.

This is where we really disagree. Silver bullets are expensive, as I already outlined above. Plus, let's compare "unsoakable", shall we? Let's assume that everything is equal: the werewolf did not jump out of the Umbra. I'll even give you an advantage: you have silver bullets. Now, who wins? Well, the vampire can get in one shot (notice I'm even giving him initiative). So he rolls Dex + Firearms and hopes to god that he kills the Werewolf. Let's assume average here: Dex 2 and I'll even give ya Firearms 3. That's 5 dice. Maybe 3 hit. Colt Anaconda damage is 6, so that's 8 dice. Probably 4 successes. Congrats, you just pissed off the Werewolf.

His actions? Rage to ignore wounds. Claw you. Dex 3 (2 + 1 for Crinos) + 3 Brawl = probably 3 successes. That's Str + 3 damage, or 9 dice. Probably 4-5 successes. Rage point to do it again. Dead vampire.

And that is assuming the vampire gets in on this on even terms... things get much, much uglier when you factor in the werewolf pack. Yeah, the werewolves never fight without their pack. Vampires? They are much more solitary and easier to catch solo.


One on one? Well... if a Vamp is going mano-a-mano with a Werewolf, he's already messed up, or he's seriously more badass than he appears to be.

I have to agree with this statement 100%. I've seen it happen, but only after the vampire in question got to spend over 300 experience points. Of course, then he could take out a pack (and did).


But you won't ever catch a vamp one on one. Ghouls, slaves, servants... and silver bullets are cheap. Let the lupines bust in the front door. A few silver shotgun blasts to the face later, and there's no more problem.

Yeah, you can catch a vampire one on one. Does the vampire ever slumber? Does he ever feed? Vampires are by their natures solitary creatures. They aren't always alone, but they are a good chunk of the time. And even worse, they have to sleep during the day.

When comparing werewolves to vampires, the werewolf will win almost always. I'm not trying to be biased because I like werewolves more -- I used to be the "Independent Vampire Storyteller" on White Wolves official chat (New Bremen) way back in the day. I like Vampires more, to be honest. But if the ST is going by pure RAW, the Werewolf will win unless he is throwing bones to the player. And ultimately, the player will lose when the pack/caern/prince comes a calling.

*Edit* Whoa... my wife accuses me of being snarky and I think it was bad in this post. I really meant no offense and I hope none was given.

mostlyharmful
2009-10-27, 04:47 AM
Yes you carry it with you which means it might get you INTO the Umbra ( see previous comment about size) it won't get you OUT of the Umbra however

Which is why you attune it and it goes with you. Plus there's no size rule in the editions I'm familiar with (in fact in 4th you just use the mirror to get a bonus to reaching and you can't be trapped between which makes it faster, easier and safer but not essential).

comicshorse
2009-10-27, 07:29 AM
Which is why you attune it and it goes with you. Plus there's no size rule in the editions I'm familiar with (in fact in 4th you just use the mirror to get a bonus to reaching and you can't be trapped between which makes it faster, easier and safer but not essential).

You're missing my point the reflective surface has to be outside the Umbra to provide a pathwy out of the it. So yes you can carry the mirror with you. It will get you into the Umbra but unless the Vamp has a reflective surface in his haven you ain't getting out

Size rule may be from the edition I'm familair with which is earlier than 4th

EDIT: And why is everyone in this assuming the Vampire isn't dodging when working out the damage a werewolf dishes out

mostlyharmful
2009-10-27, 07:40 AM
You're missing my point the reflective surface has to be outside the Umbra to provide a pathwy out of the it.

It takes a very high Gnosis to see clearly across the periphery, most Garou who aren't Theurges don't bother to pump it that high. I'm not aware of any rule that you need a reflective surface to exit the Umbra in any edition I've played in.

Kurald Galain
2009-10-27, 07:53 AM
I find it a bit dubious that a rank-2 garou would consistently deal such large amounts of damage. That does not at all match my experience playing them. Umbral ambush works, but the gauntlet tends to be pretty heavy in vamp lairs, and the umbra isn't exactly safe for garou.

What do you get? Dex + Brawl, standard diff, opposed by Dex + Dodge (and yes, people still get to dodge if you surprise them). Crinos form doesn't boost dex by much, and whereas most garou have plenty of ranks in brawl, most smart vampires have plenty of dodge as well. But yeah, your odds of hitting are pretty good. Then you get Str for damage, +4 for being crinos, plus three or four more if you got a klaive (not a given!!) at diff 6, so that's like four or five damage on average. How does this pierce Sta 10 + Fort 10 again?

Of course, we haven't put gifts into the equation yet, but then neither have we put in disciplines. As I recall, most garou don't have a good counter against obfuscate. On the other hand, there's a nasty sunbeam gift at rank 2, that predictably does horrid amounts of agg damage against kindred, but it's pretty rare.

Overall, the primary problem would be that garou tend to travel in packs, and most kindred don't.

(edit) oh and no, you don't need a mirror to exit the umbra, only to enter it.

mostlyharmful
2009-10-27, 08:27 AM
I find it a bit dubious that a rank-2 garou would consistently deal such large amounts of damage. That does not at all match my experience playing them.

That was originally Sets point about a specifically built for damage Black fury, but really most any Ahroun is going to be dealling damage high enough to cripple or incapacitate on each attack.


Umbral ambush works, but the gauntlet tends to be pretty heavy in vamp lairs, and the umbra isn't exactly safe for garou.

Which is why you don't go wandering around alone there or go to sleep there but moving fast towards a specific location in force with summoned allies is pretty safe, banes might mess with you a bit but not when your whole pack is tooled up and backed up. Plus there's ways of reducing the strength of the Gauntlet, the level 3 Fetish chime being the fastest and easiest.


What do you get? Dex + Brawl, standard diff, opposed by Dex + Dodge (and yes, people still get to dodge if you surprise them). Crinos form doesn't boost dex by much, and whereas most garou have plenty of ranks in brawl, most smart vampires have plenty of dodge as well. But yeah, your odds of hitting are pretty good. Then you get Str for damage, +4 for being crinos, plus three or four more if you got a klaive (not a given!!) at diff 6, so that's like four or five damage on average. How does this pierce Sta 10 + Fort 10 again?

Well dependant on edition the Sta of the vamp will or wont matter. And since the action economy favours the Garou you'll eventually be making unopposed attack rolls, even versus Celerity using Vamps just due to Rage and Packwork. That being said a built for combat Garou will have a high Str (4/5) + Crinos (4) + Claw (1) + sharpened Claw (level1 Ahroun Gift, +1) + Miscellaneous other gifts and pack benefits which can be HUGE if you work on it but we can leave it at +1 or 2 and left over successes from the hit roll -

Between 11 and 13 damage dice for a basic Ahroun that only just made contact, averages to six points of aggravated damage. A vamp only gets seven health and the last two you're either unable to do anything or crippled and -5 to all dicepools, die or suck so much it's not worth thinking about.

That's a level one specced for combat single attack of a Garou that'll do four or five attacks without splitting dicepools. If you add in Fetishes, mid to high level gifts and significant teamwork you can push it into the ubercharger level of silliness if you want.

Fortitude in a similarly leveled Vamp can be as high as 3 if they've put everything into it in which case they'll have a chance to stay alive and active for the second attack against which they wont be able to dodge. With an elder that dumped everything into Fortitude and Celerity it'll be able to survive and stay active possibly through the entire attack routine if it saw it coming and dedicated all actions to dodging, then the rest of the pack shreds it.

The Black Fury is able to access a gift from the tribe book I think (haven't got it on me) that lets her add damage by taking some herself which I think can still be soaked so it can be cranked pretty high. If the Antediluvian is using standerd rules for Fort and not just 'I have ten ranks in it so I'm immune everything' which isn't a given, then it gets 10 soak dice which'll remove an average of 5 damage, since it only has 7 health levels the Black Fury needs to be doing only 12 damage per attack which given optimization as a basic Ahroun means she only needs to add 4/5 levels of damage from self inflicted maximization.


Of course, we haven't put gifts into the equation yet, but then neither have we put in disciplines. As I recall, most garou don't have a good counter against obfuscate.

Fortitude isn't a discipline? Obfuscate doesn't work across the Gauntlet so Spirits get to ignore it and then you work out where it's sleeping and gank it when it doesn't have it up.

Deadmeat.GW
2009-10-27, 08:34 AM
Kurald, you are forgetting that claws, those things that do aggravated damage, come for free on all but the worst metis crinos forms...

And they add between 1 and 3 damage to the attack depending on type and basic starting gift/merits.

The vampire does not however in the 3rd edition get his stamina added to his Fortitude versus aggravated damage.

If you go second edition you do but then you end with a couple of serious flaws as in that edition there were some rather badly written gifts which were a lot more powerful by raw then by intent.

A low level garou which is not a combat monster can be a serious threat to most vampires of equal level, a combat monster is a threat to a pack of equal level vampires.

Given that most of the time garou run in packs the odds of outnumbering them is a lot less given then that.
The standard pack of Theurge, Ragabash, Ahroun and a Galliard covers most bases for combat in any field and is horrendously dangerous from the start... in open combat.

If you make them consider you as a target you are in serious trouble.
Even if you have a coterie to back you up.

There are rules for how the rules interact between vampire disciplines and garou gifts.
Dominate does work on Garou but if they are higher rank then you dominate fails automatically.
Generation background is considered your rank for this versus their rank.
If you have got a higher rank them the target garou you can use Dominate, the rules then go on to state you need to roll and defeat them using their willpower.
Garou can use 1 willpower to gain a success or to take an action like spending a rage point, if they spend a rage point they now can frenzy with that and your use of dominate (except from rank 6 plus dominate powers with specific clauses, those may work, rank 10 will work automatically unless they have a gift that makes them immune which incidently also exist at a lot lower level then a 10th rank discipline...) just failed.
The way to defeat this is to get out, frenzy is a lot less controlled and if they do not see you there is a chance they might attack a nearby other creature (like their packmates).

Do not stick around.

The gifts power is not determined by the level of the gift but the rank of the garou, a rank 2 gift with a rank 5 garou is rank five so to have a chance to oppose it with a discipline you need some who has at least 6 ranks in the background Generation...

I ran a lot of cross-over games between Garou and used the White Wolf cross-over adventures for it, those did contain the rules for handling most things.

A seriously Elder vampire will be able to handle a pack of Garou but even then at that level you have incredible power and you better hope your humanity is high enough you cannot be targeted by the gifts that specifically target humanity or use humanity as the difficulty to get them off.

We are talking sixth generation vampires or lower have better odds in surviving but even they have to be extremely wary of garou as some gifts can simply kill them or remove all of their powers.
Getting changed into a normal mortal (without any supernatural powers I may add)? Ooooops! (at least only temporarily)
Getting changed into a normal wolf? Oooops! (permanently this! But not likely to work luckily enough...)
Unable to use any blood or any blood based disciplines...? Ooops!

There are a lot of very dangerous gifts which in combination make a Vampire not want to risk dealing with a garou or let alone a pack of them.

All in all, stay low and stay away from obvious risk places is the single best way of dealing with garou, otherwise ...send in SWAT teams and make damned sure you have a plan in place for the cover-up of the aftermath and make sure you send in enough to get the job done.

The resources of a pack are not infinite so you could get them by swamping them unless they peg it into the Umbra.

EDIT: Actually, stealing the beast or similar discipline powers might be the best option, without rage access garou are a lot less dangerous but those powers are a) extremely rare or b) rather easy to resist for most garou or c0 cause serious trouble for the vampire as he now goes bat-**** crazy and keeps frenzying himself which stops him from using any disciplines bar physical ones and even then not all of those like transformation stuff.

Kurald Galain
2009-10-27, 08:45 AM
Which is why you don't go wandering around alone there or go to sleep there but moving fast towards a specific location in force with summoned allies is pretty safe,
Depends on how polluted the city is, really. It's simply not a given that Garou can quickly and safely travel wherever they want.


due to Rage and Packwork.
Wait, is this one vamp vs one garou, or one vamp vs a pack of garou?



The Black Fury is able to access a gift from the tribe book I think
Okay, but that falls under rare optimization rather than a "standard" ahroun.


Obfuscate doesn't work across the Gauntlet so Spirits get to ignore it and then you work out where it's sleeping and gank it when it doesn't have it up.
Okay, so the vamp has to invest in a decent lair, some minions, and so forth. Vampires are either smart, or they don't live long (and not just because of Garou). As I recall, stepping through the gauntlet can take up to a minute depending on your gnosis, but most ahroun aren't particularly high on gnosis. I'm quite sure a vamp can sleep while obfuscated, or for that matter in earth meld. Oh yeah, and a vampire with good humanity won't show up on Sense Wyrm, either.

I agree that the average vamp is screwed in combat against the average garou. But saying that a rank-2 garou could take down a bunch of antediluvians is, shall we say, a mild exaggeration. After all, it's a war, and the Garou are losing it. Canonically, several packs of elder Garou failed to take down Ravnos, until the Technocracy stepped in...

Deadmeat.GW
2009-10-27, 08:55 AM
That thing against Ravnos was as much handwaving for fluff as you could get away with.

None of the 'Elder' Werewolves fighting Ravnos had anything that could really harm him from the description of the fight :).
None had anything like summoned sun spirits to blind Ravnos/Burn him/force him to Rothshreik or anything. The whole pack thing looked like a bunch of pure Ahroun garou with no knowledge of what they were facing.

Of course that is not going to work on someone who can rewrite reality...

Ravnos can just rewrite reality, I doubt any other Antideluvian would have been as much of a challenge as Ravnos and they went after him with the absolute worst pack build :).

Horrid Reality cranked up to 11, Fortitude 10, ...
Worst possible combination to try and tackle for anybody if you cannot counter the reality altering powers.

As for stepping through, you can drag packmembers through the gauntlet with you so the Ragabash or the Theurge will be the ones acting there and the Ahroun/Galliard will be assaulted the moment they come through.

A ragabash and theurge in combination can hide your pack from banes and such when travelling through the Umbra, not easy but you could do it on the fly without real prepping time.

mostlyharmful
2009-10-27, 08:58 AM
Depends on how polluted the city is, really. It's simply not a given that Garou can quickly and safely travel wherever they want.

If the cities that bad in the first place then you go with the earlier point and dedicate some time and effort to it's cleanup, plus why is this vamp even on the Garou radar if he only ever does things in a place so foul and polluted that no Garou ever goes there.


Wait, is this one vamp vs one garou, or one vamp vs a pack of garou?

Sets example was of a single Black Fury maxed for damage output, the general discussion of Garou versus Cainite also has to deal with Garou being almost always in packs that'll work together. Vamps are individuallistic while weres are pack creatures, when they're young and squishy vamps might hang out together but they're just not very scary when they've got no experience, when they're old and can afford all the goodies people have been using as possible tactics versus Garou they're virtually all compulsive loners.


Okay, but that falls under rare optimization rather than a "standard" ahroun.

sets point was that it was possible not that it was common.


Okay, so the vamp has to invest in a decent lair, some minions, and so forth. Vampires are either smart, or they don't live long (and not just because of Garou).


As I recall, stepping through the gauntlet can take up to a minute depending on your gnosis, but most ahroun aren't particularly high on gnosis

Pack Theurge with high Gnosis does it after reducing the Gauntlet with the Chime, then Ahroun and Ragabash rage while Galliard provides bonusses. And who cares how long it takes if they can't see you coming and can't react due to being in a coma anyway?


I'm quite sure a vamp can sleep while obfuscated, or for that matter in earth meld.

And I'm quite sure it needs concentration, that spirits can still see them and that spirits and spirit gifts can still track them down.


Oh yeah, and a vampire with good humanity won't show up on Sense Wyrm, either.

If they've got high humanity then why are these weres chasing them? And this is why I prefer Sense the Supernatural even though it's a rank 2 gift as it gives so much more info.


I agree that the average vamp is screwed in combat against the average garou. But saying that a rank-2 garou could take down a bunch of antediluvians is, shall we say, a mild exaggeration. After all, it's a war, and the Garou are losing it. Canonically, several packs of elder Garou failed to take down Ravnos, until the Technocracy stepped in...

It certainly would be if anyone was saying it. Nobody has been, it's been a point about damage output not likely hood of winning in a fight. I think I've pointed out that difference five times now.

Kurald Galain
2009-10-27, 09:09 AM
That thing against Ravnos was as much handwaving for fluff as you could get away with.
While that's certainly true, it is also exactly what Whitewolf GMs are expected to do if such battles come up in play.

This is why Tiamat has an extensive statblock in D&D, whereas Caine simply has the two words "you lose".


It certainly would be if anyone was saying it. Nobody has been,
I refer you to this quote by Set,

A rank 2 Black Fury can do enough Aggravated damage with a single claw hit that an Antediluvian ... and can do that nine times a round, ... (if, yanno, there happened to be *nine* Sta 10 + Fort 10 Antediluvians all lined up within range).

mostlyharmful
2009-10-27, 09:13 AM
I refer you to this quote by Set,

The one that states that a Garou can pump out damage to a stationary unresponsive target?

The Gilded Duke
2009-10-27, 09:36 AM
So just for the hell of it I'm talking about nWOD.
More familiar with optimizing for the new system.

With Requiem I think I prefer my vampires.
They have better access to stat boosters then other supernaturals
and many of their stat boosters can be used with fighting styles.

Ex-Carthian VII Convert Daeva

Weapon Finesse
Dexterity of 5
Weaponry of 5
Weaponry Specialty Rapier
Reliquary +5 Rapier
Reliquary +5 Sheath
Atavist
VII Discipline to boost Dex 5
Celerity 5
Carthian Celerity to Dex Devotion
Fencing Fighting Style

Your Dexterity gets boosted to 15. You use it for attack and defense. Use the Sheath to boost the Rapier up to a +13 weapon.

Use the Millinet ability on an opponent by spending a willpower.
Roll 34 d10s - Defense, and then do an additional 15 damage on hit.
On average 26 lethal a round.

Could also do a Carthian Explosives build.
Giant Size
Vigor 5
Resiliance 5
That devotion to add Vigor to Resiliance
Stamina 5

Gives you 21 Health levels, then just carry around an explosive that does 8 automatic damage or so.

A much simpler and lower power build (possible in normal game)
Gangrel
Giant Sized
Protean 4
Resilance 2?
Swarm Form - Crows

Fly around as a murder of crows doing 6 automatic bashing a round. Only vulnerable to fire, sunlight, area attacks and ranged magical damage. Also, Earth Meld with alternate materials helps you survive any mages popping sunlight on you.

Then there are also various dual wielding two handed battle axe builds. Gladitorial combat stunlock builds. Carthian Ventrue dominate two people a round builds. Niktuku Phillipino Martial Arts Grappler builds. 11 strength draw Archer builds. Defense ignoring staff fighting build. Carthian Gangrel Armor build.

Probably the best able to compete would be a Life or Mind mage pumping up their stats to increase the rolls of their rotes or fighting style attacks, although they have to worry about consequences for getting above 5 in a stat where vampires do not.

Changelings are also pretty good with some stat and size boosts found throughout their contracts, and oaths being able to increase skills beyond five.

While the nWOD werewolves do get some early stat boosts it doesn't seem as powerful to me the more xp you put into it.

Fax Celestis
2009-10-27, 10:11 AM
That thing against Ravnos was as much handwaving for fluff as you could get away with.

None of the 'Elder' Werewolves fighting Ravnos had anything that could really harm him from the description of the fight :).
None had anything like summoned sun spirits to blind Ravnos/Burn him/force him to Rothshreik or anything. The whole pack thing looked like a bunch of pure Ahroun garou with no knowledge of what they were facing.

Of course that is not going to work on someone who can rewrite reality...

Ravnos can just rewrite reality, I doubt any other Antideluvian would have been as much of a challenge as Ravnos and they went after him with the absolute worst pack build :).

Horrid Reality cranked up to 11, Fortitude 10, ...
Worst possible combination to try and tackle for anybody if you cannot counter the reality altering powers.

As for stepping through, you can drag packmembers through the gauntlet with you so the Ragabash or the Theurge will be the ones acting there and the Ahroun/Galliard will be assaulted the moment they come through.

A ragabash and theurge in combination can hide your pack from banes and such when travelling through the Umbra, not easy but you could do it on the fly without real prepping time.

...I thought the Ravnos fight was with Cathayans?

Kurald Galain
2009-10-27, 10:29 AM
...I thought the Ravnos fight was with Cathayans?

I believe several factions threw their strongest forces at Ravnos. This didn't amount to much until the Technocracy threw down two Prime-enhanced nukes and an orbital solar lens. Epic.

comicshorse
2009-10-27, 11:00 AM
Pardon me for taking a step back but I'd like to adress some points made earlier by tcrudisi


And silver bullets? First, I'd like to see your Werewolf Lore roll, please. Oh, didn't take it? Okay, I'll allow Occult to substitute in. I hope you took it high enough!
Good point and one often overlooked in many games. However as every Hollywood movie has this having the Vampire try this isn't too unlikely and remember this cuts both ways. I remember in one of the White Wolf plots where a group of Werewolves assaulted Pentex's board of Directors and staked Enzo Giovanni and then left him there cause that was how you killed vampires right ?


You passed it? Great. Then lets talk cash. Currently silver bullets cost $60/bullet. How many would you like? And what is your Resources rating again? Okay, you have Resources high enough to not screw yourself completely. Now, what's your Firearms rating?


Again true but backgrounds are the cheapest thing to buy in Character creation and Resources is so massively useful why WOULDN'T you get it. And for Resources 3 or 4 a few clips of silver ammo aren't going to hurt too much ( and certainly not as much as NOT having them when you need them). Similairly its the modern age if you're going to defend yourself in a hostile world you will have learned how to use a gun.
So while its true you have to buy Resources and Firearms theses are things you're almost certainly going to get anyway


His actions? Rage to ignore wounds. Claw you. Dex 3 (2 + 1 for Crinos) + 3 Brawl = probably 3 successes.
No. Vampire dodges. Dex 2 + Dodge 3 + pump a point of blood into Dex. Werewolf rolls 6 dice, Vampire rolls 6 dice. Evens Werewolf misses.
Yes the Werewolf goes again but ( assuming Celerity 3 as you did) so does the Vampire. If the Vampire is weilding a silver weapon. Its pretty much a coin toss who wins. If the Vampire is experienced he has Potence which means his blows hurt more


Yeah, you can catch a vampire one on one. Does the vampire ever slumber? Does he ever feed? Vampires are by their natures solitary creatures. They aren't always alone, but they are a good chunk of the time. And even worse, they have to sleep during the day.

Yes they do and if they have half a brain their haven is flooded or pumped full of poison gas.

I do agree in a straight fight an inexperienced werewolf will kill a inexperienced vampire. But Werewolves are mortal and vampires have centuries to get good. A experienced vampire will kill or evade a inexperienced werewolf any time

Also can someone give me a reference for the fact Spirits can beat Obfuscate cause I don't remember that at all

ravenkith
2009-10-27, 11:20 AM
Vampire takes resources 5, owns an air transport company, vampire wins.

(That whole vulnerable during the day thing becomes a lot less exploitable if the vamp is airborne in one of several possible jets traveling several hundred miles an hour for the duration).

Hell, it doesn't even need resources 5 if he's willing to ship himself (and several fakes) via third party cargo planes. (corpses get shipped - and even escorted - all the time).

Last I checked it would be next to impossible to umbral travel into a jet like this.

The Gilded Duke
2009-10-27, 11:36 AM
Old World of Darkness, Mind's Eye Theater Malkavian
Dementation 4
Presence 1

The Loud Voice Merit
Medium Merit

Spend a physical trait to make everyone within 1 mile able to hear them.
Bid a social trait to use Dementation 4 against everyone within 1 mile, including spirits and ghosts (thanks to Medium)

Use Presence as a reroll on top of the normal skill reroll.

Everyone who can't successfully overbid a social focused character has to make 4 to 6 successful RPS throws to avoid either Frenzying or Roshtericking.
If they do survive that they are surrounded by a 1 mile radius of frenzying and roshtericking humans and supernatural creatures.

Not quite as bad in tabletop, but still Dementation 4 causes things to die.

Set
2009-10-27, 11:46 AM
...I thought the Ravnos fight was with Cathayans?

Cathayans are vampires done right. 2 out of 10 of the starting Disciplines can do Aggravated damage (and both of them, Protean and Thaumaturgy, are rare and more-or-less limited to specific clans). 7 out of 11 starting Kuei-Jin Disciplines can put out Aggravated damage, and Kuei-Jin not only know about the Umbra, but some of them can even go there. Kuei-Jin were created *after* the other splatbooks, and were designed to function as part of the World of Darkness. Kindred were designed before Garou, Mages, etc. and it seems like almost every book that came out after Vampire was about how the new Supernatural on the block was tougher, could access powers and realms and options that vampires didn't know about and could never have even if they did, and hated vampires with a fiery passion.

Kindred have no such luck. They don't know the umbra exists. So they can't make cunning plans to not have any reflective surfaces in their Havens. (Although, they might, completely by accident, not metagaming at all, be technophobes with a fear of their own reflection, water, glass, metal, hardwood floors and italian marble.)

A Garou in it's big form (Crinos? it's been awhile) can get away with 13 dice of Aggravated damage, and, if using the split dice pool option, can probably squeeze out three claw swings with each attack action (at the cost of less damage / swing, and increased chance of dodges removing dice). It can then blow a point of Rage to get another action, which it can also split three times (and dodges also must be split, which means that each extra Rage action taken becomes that much more likely to go un-dodged). It can have, reasonably, six to eight Rage points, if it's a combat-monkey and not the pack theurge or something. The non-elder PC vampire is going to have a maximum of 5 Fortitude, which means that he can soak all of 5 dice of that (an average of 2 or 3 HT levels).

The rank 2 Black Fury has some crazy Gift (in the main book, not in some splat) that allows it to do x2 damage on a single hit. So that first hit can potentially hit 26 Aggravated damage. But that's just icing on an already fattening cake. Skip it, make her a Get of Fenris Rank 1 cub, and you can still pump out 13 Agg *with a starting character.* The starting Vampire will be able to soak up to 5 Agg, and do nothing else, since he'll have blown all of his Freebies and Discipline Dots on Fortitude, to pretty much be just as guaranteed to die on the first hit as the Toreador who took 5 dots of Auspex. Indeed, *most* vampires don't even have Fortitude (while *all* Garou have claws, Rage and Str +4 in Crinos form).

If the vampire goes first and uses Dominate or Presence, even the 'big guns' like Majesty, which flatly stops everyone from attacking you, she can blow a point of Willpower to ignore that for one round, and gut the fool anyway (being that she's put so many points into Rage, she might only have four Willpower though, meaning she better be able to put him down with the 80 or so HT levels she'll be inflicting in those four rounds!).


The advice given upthread to fight them by hiring snipers with silver bullets and never going anywhere near a vampire, or to recruit a True Mage, or use Necromancy to throw Wraiths at them, are your best bets. (And it can be assumed that silver bullets is common knowledge, thanks to the movies, even if your Kindred has no idea what the Umbra is, or what a Sun Totem is, what the Weaver/Wyld/Wyrm thing is about or that your city is crawling with politically connected Glass Walkers who *also* can mind control mortals to do their bidding.)

Your best bet is to get someone better built for the job to fight Werewolves on your behalf, and your biggest advantage over every other Supernatural in existence is the ability to make unlimited amounts of Blood Bonded local authorities, Ghouls and / or expendable Neonates to throw at an enemy, while you stay the heck away from them. Having too many blood bonded thralls is generally a recipe for disaster, but if you know none of them are going to survive the weekend, it's less troublesome.

comicshorse
2009-10-27, 11:58 AM
Posted by Set
[
tangent] Cathayans are vampires done right. 2 out of 10 of the starting Disciplines can do Aggravated damage (and both of them, Protean and Thaumaturgy, are rare and more-or-less limited to specific clans). 7 out of 11 starting Kuei-Jin Disciplines can put out Aggravated damage,

And lets not forget Flow Like Blood, a Level 3 Discipline that lets you dodge EVERY attack against you. Never played a Cathyan that didn't have this


if using the split dice pool option, can probably squeeze out three claw swings with each attack action
At the cost of thirding its dice pool to attack and there's no reason the Vampire can't third his Dodge dice and have a dodge against every one of them. Yes the Werewolf can spend Rage for other actions but the vampire has Celerity and you don't run out of Celerity ( well not as fast as the Werewolf will use up his Rage). Similairly the Vampire will have pumped his Dex to ensure the Werewolf has even less chance to hit him


Completely agree with everything else

Kurald Galain
2009-10-27, 11:58 AM
it seems like almost every book that came out after Vampire was about how the new Supernatural on the block was tougher,
I don't think so. A vampire can likely take down a mage in combat (depending on preparation of the latter, of course), and can probably take down a changeling or a hunter in combat.


and hated vampires with a fiery passion.
You know who else hates vampires with a fiery passion? Other vampires. This is the WOD we're talking about - everybody hates everybody, that's a core part of design. That said, Ventrue are known to cooperate with Silver Fangs and with Technocracy mages, and Bone Gnawers are known to be friendly with some Nos. I'm sure there's other examples.


So they can't make cunning plans to not have any reflective surfaces in their Havens.
Yeah, that doesn't actually help. Reflective stuff is for getting into the umbra, not out.


It can then blow a point of Rage to get another action, which it can also split three times (and dodges also must be split, which means that each extra Rage action
(a) this is blatant powergaming, and (b) I'm reasonably sure that extra actions cannot be split.

Sure, any system breaks if you min-max it. Doesn't mean a competent DM will let you. No, WOD doesn't work for this kind of PVP combat; it's not intended to. This is just like saying D&D sucks because it has Pun-Pun.


(And it can be assumed that silver bullets is common knowledge, thanks to the movies, even if your Kindred has no idea what the Umbra is,
Only if you assume that vampire hunters are equipped with garlic.


Your best bet is to get someone better built for the job to fight Werewolves on your behalf,
The point (or part of the point) of Werewolf is combat. The point of Vampire is to avoid combat, because it can get you killed, even when no Garou are around. So yeah, the combat-focused "race" defeats the non-combat-focused "race". Then again, "getting someone else to do stuff for you" is what Vampire is about.

Random832
2009-10-27, 12:15 PM
Mage wins initiative, you are now a lawn chair. Game over

You know... maybe this deserves another thread...

But if a Mage can turn a vampire into a lawn chair... doesn't that mean a Mage can turn a lawn chair into a vampire?

Does that mean you can buy a bunch of lawn chairs on clearance and have your own personal army of vampires?

The Gilded Duke
2009-10-27, 12:34 PM
I think a better way to say it is:
A mage can turn the body of a vampire into a lawn chair.
They could also turn a lawn chair into the body of a vampire.
However changing the vampires soul, mystic powers, generation, existence as a vampire and so on is much harder.

There is one book released shortly before oWOD ended which was a mage/vampire campaign where different groups were trying to figure out a way to turn a vampire into a human again.

I think it involved doing lots of archeology and research to uncover ancient books that would temporarily boost a Mage's power to Sphere's above 5, and that maybe then turning a vampire into a human might work.

Random832
2009-10-27, 12:36 PM
I think a better way to say it is:
A mage can turn the body of a vampire into a lawn chair.
They could also turn a lawn chair into the body of a vampire.
However changing the vampires soul, mystic powers, generation, existence as a vampire and so on is much harder.

Can the vampires soul etc etc animate a lawn chair which its body was turned in to?

That's almost more awesome than turning a vampire into a lawn chair in the first place.

The Gilded Duke
2009-10-27, 12:40 PM
Well I imagine that a lawn chair has no moving parts.
However it would probably still be able to obfuscate,
if it had high enough auspex it could probably astrally project.
It would be able to use some presence powers.
It would still need to drink blood and go to sleep during the day.
(but have no fangs) and would still be damaged by sunlight.

Now all that said, I don't think being turned into a vampire would be much of an obstacle for a Gangrel or a Tsimizce vampire. The Matter (Or Life or Entropy depending on edition) doesn't remove their ability to change their own shape afterall.

Tiki Snakes
2009-10-27, 12:40 PM
I think a better way to say it is:
A mage can turn the body of a vampire into a lawn chair.
They could also turn a lawn chair into the body of a vampire.
However changing the vampires soul, mystic powers, generation, existence as a vampire and so on is much harder.

There is one book released shortly before oWOD ended which was a mage/vampire campaign where different groups were trying to figure out a way to turn a vampire into a human again.

I think it involved doing lots of archeology and research to uncover ancient books that would temporarily boost a Mage's power to Sphere's above 5, and that maybe then turning a vampire into a human might work.

So all he's done is turn your form into that of a Lawn-Chair.....OF THE DAMNED!

I like where this is going.

Random832
2009-10-27, 12:45 PM
Well I imagine that a lawn chair has no moving parts.

If it's a folding lawn chair, this is only true by the same definition by which a corpse has no moving parts. Or fangs.

Kurald Galain
2009-10-27, 01:12 PM
Mage wins initiative, you are now a lawn chair. Game over
That's a classic, but that's significantly harder to pull off in second edition than in first - not to mention Vulgar.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-10-27, 04:58 PM
That's a classic, but that's significantly harder to pull off in second edition than in first - not to mention Vulgar.
Really, it's much easier for the Mage to just cast "Convert Clothing To Fire" (Matter 2 / Forces 3 - by RAW) and eat the 'dox.

Of course, that's just for a novice Mage. Obviously a more experienced Mage would cast "Convert Clothing into Nuclear Blast" (Matter 2 / Forces 5) or the ever-popular "Summon Mini-Sun" (Forces 3 or 5 / Prime 2).

The only way a Vampire wins here is by complete and overwhelming force coupled by total surprise. This becomes more difficult when even beginning Mages can predict the future (Time 2 / Entropy 1), see around corners (Correspondence 3), and read your thoughts (Mind 3).

Yeah, Mages were pretty silly in oWoD :smalltongue:

Riffington
2009-10-27, 06:24 PM
Some of you are really overestimating Mages with 3 dots in spheres. A lot of good effects have really high DCs and required number of successes.

Vampire->Lawnchair is often quoted, but it's likely DC 10 with 5 required successes. Throwing fire is cool, but it's about 3 agg cool. It's not kill a Brujah cool.

Kurald Galain
2009-10-27, 06:31 PM
Really, it's much easier for the Mage to just cast "Convert Clothing To Fire" (Matter 2 / Forces 3 - by RAW) and eat the 'dox.
True enough, but it would probably take him several rounds to pull that one off.

Deadmeat.GW
2009-10-27, 09:57 PM
So just for the hell of it I'm talking about nWOD.
More familiar with optimizing for the new system.

With Requiem I think I prefer my vampires.
They have better access to stat boosters then other supernaturals
and many of their stat boosters can be used with fighting styles.

Ex-Carthian VII Convert Daeva

Weapon Finesse
Dexterity of 5
Weaponry of 5
Weaponry Specialty Rapier
Reliquary +5 Rapier
Reliquary +5 Sheath
Atavist
VII Discipline to boost Dex 5
Celerity 5
Carthian Celerity to Dex Devotion
Fencing Fighting Style

Your Dexterity gets boosted to 15. You use it for attack and defense. Use the Sheath to boost the Rapier up to a +13 weapon.

Use the Millinet ability on an opponent by spending a willpower.
Roll 34 d10s - Defense, and then do an additional 15 damage on hit.
On average 26 lethal a round.

Could also do a Carthian Explosives build.
Giant Size
Vigor 5
Resiliance 5
That devotion to add Vigor to Resiliance
Stamina 5

Gives you 21 Health levels, then just carry around an explosive that does 8 automatic damage or so.

A much simpler and lower power build (possible in normal game)
Gangrel
Giant Sized
Protean 4
Resilance 2?
Swarm Form - Crows

Fly around as a murder of crows doing 6 automatic bashing a round. Only vulnerable to fire, sunlight, area attacks and ranged magical damage. Also, Earth Meld with alternate materials helps you survive any mages popping sunlight on you.

Then there are also various dual wielding two handed battle axe builds. Gladitorial combat stunlock builds. Carthian Ventrue dominate two people a round builds. Niktuku Phillipino Martial Arts Grappler builds. 11 strength draw Archer builds. Defense ignoring staff fighting build. Carthian Gangrel Armor build.

Probably the best able to compete would be a Life or Mind mage pumping up their stats to increase the rolls of their rotes or fighting style attacks, although they have to worry about consequences for getting above 5 in a stat where vampires do not.

Changelings are also pretty good with some stat and size boosts found throughout their contracts, and oaths being able to increase skills beyond five.

While the nWOD werewolves do get some early stat boosts it doesn't seem as powerful to me the more xp you put into it.

Hum, what generation vampire are you talking about?
And which rules book allowed you to increase your stats over your generational maximum (basic core rules that) for more then one round?

And if you want to go reliquary weapons just check out the ancient Klaives...
Anything that goes +8 aggravated damage or more with damage multipliers (after soak double damage, get the ability twice then triple damage and so-on...or triple damage before soak on some stuff...).

Multipliers for damage are pretty easy to get for garou...
How does the multiplier for Fortitude work out in comparisson?

As for pumping Dex, if he pumped his dex before the fight he just wasted his blood and reverts to his non-modified dex, if he did it during the fight he has to be able to go first and his action would be pumping blood and activating disciplines...which is not guaranteed to be before the garou nor does it keep in mind that you only need 1 success on the hit to do a whole lot of agg.

None of those builds you spoke of go first unless they have an ungodly amount of xp but then perhaps you mean to show that someone with twenty or thirty times the xp to spend on character building could win a fight?

The Gilded Duke
2009-10-28, 07:25 AM
Most of those were for high xp play.
Vigor lasts all combat, Resiliance lasts all combat.
Celerity and the other ones require blood to be spent.
But blood isn't hard to get.

Where are there damage multipliers in nWOD?
Did I just miss them?

As far as lower cost build, Archer or Swarm form is the easiest to make.

Archer make a starting Daeva or Nos, put all discipline points into Vigor.
Gain the first two levels of the archery fighting style
Strength 3, Dex 3, Athletics 4, bow specialization.

When Vigor is on you can use a Strength 8 Composite Longbow.
Use it with either the broad head or bodkin arrows.

You are now attacking with a +10 Weapon, for a total of +18. It does lethal to vampires, can stake, and ignores defense at range. Your max damage per round is capped at 10.

This is with a starting level character, I'd have to check, but I think Daeva get a free boost to either Strength or Dex which would push the attack up to +19.

Swarm Form Gangrel is a bit more expensive, but doable relatively early in an ongoing game.

Start with Giant Size and 3 Protean.
Put most of your physical stats into stamina to increase survivability.
Pay 20 xp for Protean 4.
Buy the Swarm Form merit for something with flight.

You do automatic bashing equal to your size (6) which ignores defense and anything but total covering armor. Also immune to anything but fire, sunlight, area effect damage, and ranged magical damage.

Not many people carry grenades or flamethrowers around. And if they do just fly away.

Frerezar
2009-10-28, 09:27 AM
Just my 2 cp. A while ago I played a Dark Ages Norse inspired Gangrel (polar bear) who was built to smash werewolves. His gift of protean allowed him to turn himself into a ¨hybrid form¨ while using protean 4 (giving him pretty cool strenght and stamina increases), add on the str and sta bonuses from true berserk and this random technique that allowed him to kind of cover himself with bear skin (which allowed him to add his ormal stamina to soaking agravated damage on top of his considerable fortitude). With all this I did the math (when i used to be much more into vampire) and it would take a Geth of Fenris using Thor´s Might to deal him any damage.
It´s fair to point out that he had a nice couple of magic items through the use of a norse merit that allowed his companion to follow a sorcery path (enchantment), which included a magic silver hammer and some extra str and stamina items.

Point being, the best part about killing a garou s not doing it, it is preparing for it.

Kurald Galain
2009-10-28, 09:38 AM
Just my 2 cp. A while ago I played a Dark Ages Norse inspired Gangrel (polar bear) who was built to smash werewolves. His gift of protean allowed him to turn himself into a ¨hybrid form¨ while using protean 4 (giving him pretty cool strenght and stamina increases),
Protean 4 doesn't actually do that.

Point being, any system can be broken by min-maxing it.

Frerezar
2009-10-28, 09:45 AM
My vampire knowledge is a bit rusty, so I might be wrong. But as far as i remmeber protean 4 is the one that allowed to turn into an animal. And the merit Gift of Protean allows for changes to the aspect it takes. So in this case all it did was make it look like a hybrid form (for flavor reazons)
And I think the problem lays in that I use the rules from Protean from the Gangrel Clanbook, which has them as bonuses to your existing atributes instead of replacements.
At any rate I don´t think this can be considered broken in anyway, as all it did was get to pair with the freakign werewolves that erradicated the previous coterie. I failed to point out that I did this in response to a long ago abandoned GM who had a ¨thing¨ for werewolves and had them be the star in evey vampire game he run ugh.

Gnaeus
2009-10-28, 10:03 AM
Ravnos can just rewrite reality, I doubt any other Antideluvian would have been as much of a challenge as Ravnos and they went after him with the absolute worst pack build :).

Horrid Reality cranked up to 11, Fortitude 10, ...
Worst possible combination to try and tackle for anybody if you cannot counter the reality altering powers.

Heh. Hardly.

Anyone with Auspex 10 "I got a precognitive vision 20 years ago that you were going to attack me. So I sent my minions to kill you when you were 5. Or I just told your parents to do it. Maybe they went crazy and became BSDs afterwords, I don't care I'm an antediluvian."

Anyone with Presence 10. "Lets not attack Mr. Antediluvian. He seems so nice!" with willpower expenditure canceled by some custom elder power.

Obfuscate 10. "Frack! Something is hitting elder garou bob in the face and I can't tell what it is! I can't hit it!".... 6 seconds later "I don't know what happened. All I can remember is finding elder garou bob here with this hole in his face."

Dominate 10, Necromancy 10, Thaumaturgy 10 all have "I win buttons" that are just as good as Ravnos' powers.

On a similar note, the real problem isn't what happens when your normal werewolf pack kills your normal vampire...It is what happens a year later. Maybe you can storm the local tremere chantry, or kill the local ventrue leader. Then the lord or the ventrue's grandsire get hacked off that you wasted their pawns, and they send their "Garou conflict resolution team" to resolve the problem, and then go looking for some more capable minions to embrace. Elder vampires have powers and resources at their disposal that can lay waste to garou, and garou have no good way to know which vampires they can kill without repercussions, and which ones result in specialists obliterating them.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-10-28, 10:26 AM
True enough, but it would probably take him several rounds to pull that one off.
I'm not so sure he'd need to Ritualize it.

I mean, we're talking about a thin layer of cloth with roughly the surface area of a normal person. I'm AFB ATM but IIRC 3 Arete should be more than sufficient to convert that amount of clothing. Heck, if he had Prime 1, he could burn a point of Quintessence and a point of Willpower to cover any shortfalls.

I mean, bad comes to worst, he can just do the pants :smalltongue:

Mental Note: next Mage game, play a Hermetic Pyromaniac Voyeur (Matter 2 / Forces 3 / Prime 1)

graymachine
2009-10-29, 02:28 PM
I'm surprised no one has mentioned a good old-fashion Sabbat Shovel Party to deal with a werewolf incursion.

Shadwen
2009-10-29, 02:40 PM
Nah wouldnt need the whole shovel party...just maybe 8-9

Oracle_Hunter
2009-10-29, 03:04 PM
I'm surprised no one has mentioned a good old-fashion Sabbat Shovel Party to deal with a werewolf incursion.
I haven't heard of this, actually. Is this mass-embracing or something? :smallconfused:

Fax Celestis
2009-10-29, 03:06 PM
I haven't heard of this, actually. Is this mass-embracing or something? :smallconfused:

Hit a bunch of people in the head with shovels and embrace them all, and then let the resultant post-embrace hunger weed out the weak and undeserving. Rather common Sabbat tactic.

Moriato
2009-10-29, 03:07 PM
I haven't heard of this, actually. Is this mass-embracing or something? :smallconfused:

They find some random schmucks, knock them out, embrace them, bury them so they have to dig their way out, then dominate/intimidate them into doing whatever they want them to do, or just let them run amok.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-10-29, 03:10 PM
That's what I thought it was - just never heard the term before.

Oh, oWoD, you had such delicious flavor :smalltongue:

Shadwen
2009-10-29, 03:12 PM
Yeah its a sabbat swarming tactic.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-10-29, 03:23 PM
Still, I can't help but think that a single Garou would be able to destroy any number of newly-spawned Thirteenth Generation childer. I mean, they don't know anything (or much) about their abilities and, aside from Fangs, have no inherent advantage over being regular humans.

Plus, Garou automatically heal all non-aggravated damage, and a bunch of frenzied thinbloods aren't going to be able to leverage their few sources of Aggravated damage effectively enough to counter the Chrinos' badassitude.

Shadwen
2009-10-29, 03:30 PM
I agree that a garou is very potent...no matter what faces them...but 300 newly spawned with torches can do it..and if not torches strap gas to there backs and send em in...torch the garou...you dont need those baby vamps

graymachine
2009-10-29, 04:02 PM
Despite the irreverent nature of the Sabbat, they aren't stupid. Typically they will have their lowest gens doing the embracing, with refreshments on the side to keep them going. Also, they'll try to use clans that provide the physical disciplines; potence and fortitude are common. And, sure, the Sabbat are going to have a lot of losses among the shovelheads, but they don't care at all. Most likely they'd gamble on it. The few that manage to survive out of the many dozens, "Congratulations, you've proven yourself to be strong enough to be in the Sabbat."

This, combined with the rampant diablerie, is why Sabbat members tend to be lower gen than their Cam counterparts.

EDIT: Of course, this is in an open war scenario, so there will be some protection of the Masquerade. While the Sabbat officially despise the Masquerade, they put some minimal effort into it for practicality's sake.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-10-29, 04:19 PM
I agree that a garou is very potent...no matter what faces them...but 300 newly spawned with torches can do it..and if not torches strap gas to there backs and send em in...torch the garou...you dont need those baby vamps
You do need a whole lot of Rotschrek tests :smalltongue:

Plus, Frenzied Neonates + Fire = Bad Idea

Moriato
2009-10-29, 04:20 PM
Still, I can't help but think that a single Garou would be able to destroy any number of newly-spawned Thirteenth Generation childer. I mean, they don't know anything (or much) about their abilities and, aside from Fangs, have no inherent advantage over being regular humans.

Plus, Garou automatically heal all non-aggravated damage, and a bunch of frenzied thinbloods aren't going to be able to leverage their few sources of Aggravated damage effectively enough to counter the Chrinos' badassitude.

They can still do some damage. They're probably going to be frenzied, which means no wound penalties, and garou actually don't regenerate automatically while in combat, you have to make a stamina roll and it's still only 1 health level per round.

You can't kill garou with non-aggravated damage, but a frenzied vamp is likely to just drain the garou dry once he's down, and that will kill him.

Again, not really that much of a problem for a pack, but a lone werewolf would be in serious danger. And yes, werewolves are occasionally alone. I don't care how close you are to your packmates, they can't be there 24/7, it's not like they sleep in one big werewolf pile.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-10-29, 04:25 PM
They can still do some damage. They're probably going to be frenzied, which means no wound penalties, and garou actually don't regenerate automatically while in combat, you have to make a stamina roll and it's still only 1 health level per round.

You can't kill garou with non-aggravated damage, but a frenzied vamp is likely to just drain the garou dry once he's down, and that will kill him.
Fair enough, but most Garou have, what, STR 8 and STA 6 in Chrinos form? That's an awful lot of non-soakable damage and soak dice for any number of frenzied vamps to deal with.

And that's without taking into account any Gifts or combat training they might have. I still think even a lone Garou can stand up to anything less than a platoon of frenzied neonates.

vegetalss4
2009-10-29, 04:28 PM
Despite the irreverent nature of the Sabbat, they aren't stupid. Typically they will have their lowest gens doing the embracing, with refreshments on the side to keep them going. Also, they'll try to use clans that provide the physical disciplines; potence and fortitude are common. And, sure, the Sabbat are going to have a lot of losses among the shovelheads, but they don't care at all. Most likely they'd gamble on it. The few that manage to survive out of the many dozens, "Congratulations, you've proven yourself to be strong enough to be in the Sabbat."

Note empasis is mine
We are talking about a process involving draining several humans of every last drop of blood in their body right?

Oracle_Hunter
2009-10-29, 04:39 PM
Note empasis is mine
We are talking about a process involving draining several humans of every last drop of blood in their body right?
Sure, it's not so hard. Humans have, what, 10 Blood Points at most? If you want to drink it all, IIRC you can drink 2/round, but a better procedure would be to slit some arteries and have the blood drain into big vats - it's quick and can allow for the quick distribution of blood to where it's needed.

If the Sabbat really want to get into it, I imagine they could churn out an army of thinbloods with proper division of labor :smalltongue:

Still, you have the problem of getting the frenzying thinbloods to the Garou. I guess you could just transport the corpses and have Gangel Antitribu stand nearby to drop blood into the corpses.

Better still if you could get a remote mechanism to feed a Blood Point into the corpse so that you could re-animate them en masse when the target Garou reaches the location.

. . . what? I spent a perfectly reasonable amount of time considering this stuff. It's not obsessive at all :smalltongue:

Moriato
2009-10-29, 04:48 PM
Note empasis is mine
We are talking about a process involving draining several humans of every last drop of blood in their body right?

Oh yeah. Having extra people around isn't really even neccisary though, since you have to drain a person to embrace them anyway, so you basically take their blood out, it becomes your own by virtue of it now being in you, then put it back in them, rinse (or not, yummy) repeat.

graymachine
2009-10-29, 05:04 PM
Good point about the victims; for some reason I spaced on them having blood points. Still, the extra humans can be used to bait the new fledglings in the direction of the Garou. Just dominate them to drive. Furthermore, you place other vampires from your pack(s) on rooftops with high-powered rifles and long range disciplines.

Also, do your best to get the Garou to frenzy; while it is scary, you are pretty stupid in a frenzy.

The shovelheads aren't typically going to be thinbloods, as the Sabbat know that, even in a frenzied state, that's that much more blood per turn that can be spent. Thinblooded shovelheads show up when it's all out war, like the Sabbat taking of New York.

Sergeantbrother
2009-10-29, 05:07 PM
Don't have newly embraced vampires attack with torches. Make humans into ghouls, they are more subservient, more sustainable, and can function in the daytime. Also, give them guns. Just go down to your local Walmart, buy some shotguns and ammo, and there you go. For finishing blows, give them some silver knives. You could create an army of ghouls this way to outnumber the werewolves 100-1.

comicshorse
2009-10-29, 05:08 PM
Posted by Oracle Hunter

Plus, Garou automatically heal all non-aggravated damage, and a bunch of frenzied thinbloods aren't going to be able to leverage their few sources of Aggravated damage effectively enough to counter the Chrinos' badassitude.

I believe vampire fangs count as aggravated and every vampire has them

Moriato
2009-10-29, 05:09 PM
Posted by Oracle Hunter


I believe vampire fangs count as aggravated and every vampire has them

He mentioned the fangs earlier in that same post.

Anyway, I think what it all boils down to is who has the better plan, the most rescources, and luck.

Sure, a werewolf can usually kill a vampire in melee combat. In the same way a fighter can kill a wizard in melee combat, but why would a wizard be involved in melee combat in the first place?

Pretty much every creature in the old world of darkness has soem ability that pretty much means instant death to whatever they use it on. The question is who gets to use it first?

Oracle_Hunter
2009-10-29, 05:29 PM
Sure, a werewolf can usually kill a vampire in melee combat. In the same way a fighter can kill a wizard in melee combat, but why would a wizard be involved in melee combat in the first place?
Well, in the Vampire's case it's because they can't make Scry-and-Die attacks. Indirect attacks are all well and good, but the OP (if you can remember) was looking to make a Werewolf Hunter.

I'd say that, save for the most powerful vampires versus the weakest Garou, no single vampire is going to be able to take a Garou toe-to-toe. I've heard it said that the Garou are "Gaia's Tac Nuke" and I've yet to find a better description of them :smalltongue:

Now, Mage vs. Werewolf is a different story altogether :smallcool:

graymachine
2009-10-30, 08:48 AM
I suppose back onto the track of the OP:

You could focus on one tribe, such as the Bonegnawers, to exploit the political hatred that is rampant amongst the tribes, despite the opinions otherwise found in this thread. No one is going to care that Bonegnawers die here and there, especially if you stay on the move (except other Bonegnawers, obviously.) Hell, if you kill one every few cities, no one will notice. You could try focusing on Lost Cubs, but that would be pretty tricky. While they would be much easier to take down, you'd have to worry about packs of Garou showing up at inopportune times, almost as though it was scripted. :smallconfused:

Make friends in Pentex; they will be more than happy to arm you to the teeth if you are hunting Garou. Take some allies from Pentex, specify that the are your fomori hunting buddies, and build them from scratch to kill Garou using the Freak Legion book. Get them addicted to several substances and have both Presence and Dominate standing by for good measure. Keep an eye out for bane fetishes you can use and buy plenty of thamaturgic items. Try to get infested with a bane.

If you are playing a high powered game, use the Elder's Handbook to buy backgrounds above 5. These will help you realize your dream of awesome resources/allies/etc. Try to get the Elder building rules for your character; set yourself up as the Hound if you are staying in one place. Also, get yourself off the Path of Humanity and onto the Path of Heaven or the Path of Honorable Accord. You can be fanatical on those paths and maintain a high score, making you immune to Sense Wyrm. Pay Tremere buddies to regularly alter your appearance.

Either way, you are obviously not going to be taking the direct approach. You want to play this like The Most Dangerous Game; hunt and study your prey before striking. Kill some of the target's kinfolk first, get them angry and stupid. Set up lethal traps, always have a way out, max out Werewolf Lore.

We'll have you walking in the footsteps of Sam Haight in no time. :smallamused:

comicshorse
2009-10-30, 12:01 PM
Make friends in Pentex; they will be more than happy to arm you to the teeth if you are hunting Garou. Take some allies from Pentex, specify that the are your fomori hunting buddies, and build them from scratch to kill Garou using the Freak Legion book. Get them addicted to several substances and have both Presence and Dominate standing by for good measure. Keep an eye out for bane fetishes you can use and buy plenty of thamaturgic items. Try to get infested with a bane.

That would work but you are turning yourself into a complete monster and , if you beleive in such things, damning yourself forever.

Learn Obfuscate, learn Demolitions. Leave bombs with silver shrapnel. Never be within a 100 metres of the Werewolf and then never be within sight if you aren't Obfuscated

mostlyharmful
2009-11-01, 03:50 PM
You could focus on one tribe, such as the Bonegnawers,

Sorry, how high is your Werewolf Lore again? Oh, and the Bonegnawers are mechanically no weaker than any other Garou and harder than most by their giftlist/lifestyle.


to exploit the political hatred that is rampant amongst the tribes, despite the opinions otherwise found in this thread

It was hatred, now it's politics. Just like most endangered communities/societies they've scaled back their traditional hobbies/grudgematches in the face of annihilation, you could use Black Spiral Dancers but again how high is your Lore and how're you getting into that meeting without turning to Ash seeing as how they're not the most reasonable of people?


No one is going to care that Bonegnawers die here and there, especially if you stay on the move (except other Bonegnawers, obviously.)

Bonegnawers will. So will their packmates. so will the local Caern Warder who's job it is to be professional and not a prejudiced moron. And again, Bonegrawers are no weaker than any other Garou, they don't get Resources and that's just about it.... they get claws, fangs, crinos, gifts, rites, packmates, septmates, spirit allies, just like every other tribe..


Hell, if you kill one every few cities, no one will notice.

depends on how socially connected Garou in each city is and how many of them there are but since they're fighting a war and they dont tend to die by accident someone almost certainly will and will notice a pattern if it starts to form.


You could try focusing on Lost Cubs, but that would be pretty tricky.

How high is your Garou Lore???? You're now routinely finding lost cubs which the Garou nation doesn't even know about and can tell the difference between an aware Garou, a tracked Cub and a lost Cub???


While they would be much easier to take down, you'd have to worry about packs of Garou showing up at inopportune times, almost as though it was scripted. :smallconfused:

If you can find it.. and if it doesn't just frenzy on your ass... then it'll be a lot easier to take down yes, congrats, you've now killed something less hard than a starting Garou character (by quite a long way). This doesn't inspire confidence in your future career in werewolf hunting.


Make friends in Pentex; they will be more than happy to arm you to the teeth if you are hunting Garou.

Ah, you've also Got Wyrm Lore up the yang-tze have you? and contacts? and allies? and huge social skills? hmm.....


Take some allies from Pentex, specify that the are your fomori hunting buddies, and build them from scratch to kill Garou using the Freak Legion book.

Yes, if you get to pick anything you want from any book, modify it as you want, recruit and retrain the cream of the crop of the werewolves other enemies... you'lll.... be able to direct the werewolves other enemies towards fighting the werewolves... this is like saying a fighter can take on a wizard by hiring a higher level wizard with his WBL, technically true but rather self-defeating.


Get them addicted to several substances and have both Presence and Dominate standing by for good measure.

Vamps get good social powers certainly, and with access to other sources of minions can mindgank something vaguely challenging to a begining Garou on their own so long as the vamp has uber knowledge and contacts... ok. So the best werewolf hunter is the one that doesn't do it and just provides intel to a bigger scarier threat in the supernatural world. And good luck trying to hide your trail from their spirit allies they'll be calling up for info on who spilled their secrets and how they found out about whatever you sold onto the black market.


Try to get infested with a bane.

Ok. Now we're just getting silly. right?


If you are playing a high powered game, use the Elder's Handbook to buy backgrounds above 5. These will help you realize your dream of awesome resources/allies/etc. Try to get the Elder building rules for your character; set yourself up as the Hound if you are staying in one place. Also, get yourself off the Path of Humanity and onto the Path of Heaven or the Path of Honorable Accord. You can be fanatical on those paths and maintain a high score, making you immune to Sense Wyrm. Pay Tremere buddies to regularly alter your appearance.

Ah. right. So if you get hundreds or thousands of XP you can play it with prep work to get the drop and have a reasonable chance at winning versus a starting out pack?:smallwink:

ravenkith
2009-11-01, 06:56 PM
Alternatively, you could play as an extremely smart vampire scientist who works on identifying and isolating the werewolf 'gene' (which, since it is expressed as an only sometimes inherited trait, is clearly on the y chromosome), and build a modified retrovirus to either render it inactive in the human population, or if really evil, build thousands of replicating nanomachines made from silver that actively target those with the gene and cause them to die horrible, horrible deaths as all of their cells undergo massive internal hemorrhaging at the molecular level.

The answer to a problem is not always physical violence.

Tiki Snakes
2009-11-01, 06:58 PM
Alternatively, you could play as an extremely smart vampire scientist who works on identifying and isolating the werewolf 'gene' (which, since it is expressed as an only sometimes inherited trait, is clearly on the y chromosome), and build a modified retrovirus to either render it inactive in the human population, or if really evil, build thousands of replicating nanomachines made from silver that actively target those with the gene and cause them to die horrible, horrible deaths as all of their cells undergo massive internal hemorrhaging at the molecular level.

The answer to a problem is not always physical violence.

So how many resource, intelligence and sciencey dots DOES it take to create thousands upon thousands of self-replicating nano-machines capable of distributing themselves across the human race?

;)

ravenkith
2009-11-01, 07:27 PM
So how many resource, intelligence and sciencey dots DOES it take to create thousands upon thousands of self-replicating nano-machines capable of distributing themselves across the human race?

;)

Not as many as you'd think.

Int 4 or 5
Science 4 or 5
Resources 3?

Not a starting character's bag, but if you've gained a little experience....

After all, you wouldn't need to make thousands of them if you made them SELF-replicating.

As a vampire, the one thing you have on your side is time. Keep a low profile, work on your research. Pay (or ghoul) to obtain the medical records and blood samples of known garou...(and since garou 'coming out parties' tend to be fairly messy affairs, in any country with modern medicine, this should be easily achievable).

Take samples from discovered kinfolk, pay others for samples from he dead, and keep them shielded from magical/spiritual detection. <shrug>.

Bottom line: Vampires who want to remain in the world don't go for physical confrontations.

graymachine
2009-11-02, 10:29 AM
Sorry, how high is your Werewolf Lore again? Oh, and the Bonegnawers are mechanically no weaker than any other Garou and harder than most by their giftlist/lifestyle.



It was hatred, now it's politics. Just like most endangered communities/societies they've scaled back their traditional hobbies/grudgematches in the face of annihilation, you could use Black Spiral Dancers but again how high is your Lore and how're you getting into that meeting without turning to Ash seeing as how they're not the most reasonable of people?



Bonegnawers will. So will their packmates. so will the local Caern Warder who's job it is to be professional and not a prejudiced moron. And again, Bonegrawers are no weaker than any other Garou, they don't get Resources and that's just about it.... they get claws, fangs, crinos, gifts, rites, packmates, septmates, spirit allies, just like every other tribe..



depends on how socially connected Garou in each city is and how many of them there are but since they're fighting a war and they dont tend to die by accident someone almost certainly will and will notice a pattern if it starts to form.



How high is your Garou Lore???? You're now routinely finding lost cubs which the Garou nation doesn't even know about and can tell the difference between an aware Garou, a tracked Cub and a lost Cub???



If you can find it.. and if it doesn't just frenzy on your ass... then it'll be a lot easier to take down yes, congrats, you've now killed something less hard than a starting Garou character (by quite a long way). This doesn't inspire confidence in your future career in werewolf hunting.



Ah, you've also Got Wyrm Lore up the yang-tze have you? and contacts? and allies? and huge social skills? hmm.....



Yes, if you get to pick anything you want from any book, modify it as you want, recruit and retrain the cream of the crop of the werewolves other enemies... you'lll.... be able to direct the werewolves other enemies towards fighting the werewolves... this is like saying a fighter can take on a wizard by hiring a higher level wizard with his WBL, technically true but rather self-defeating.



Vamps get good social powers certainly, and with access to other sources of minions can mindgank something vaguely challenging to a begining Garou on their own so long as the vamp has uber knowledge and contacts... ok. So the best werewolf hunter is the one that doesn't do it and just provides intel to a bigger scarier threat in the supernatural world. And good luck trying to hide your trail from their spirit allies they'll be calling up for info on who spilled their secrets and how they found out about whatever you sold onto the black market.



Ok. Now we're just getting silly. right?



Ah. right. So if you get hundreds or thousands of XP you can play it with prep work to get the drop and have a reasonable chance at winning versus a starting out pack?:smallwink:

The purpose of the post was to offer some ideas to the OP for creating a vampiric werewolf hunter. It was implied that the player would purchase high werewolf lore, probably with some specialties. I don't think that venomously recriminating everyone that suggests a vampire can be in the same region as a werewolf and not automatically gib is not conductive to the OP's needs. Obviously, we should be taking the perspective here that Vampire is the primary game being run and work from there. I think we need more information about the game specifically to get anywhere.

Oh, and OP, never ever mention to your Storyteller Paws of the Newborn Cub.Ever.

Kurald Galain
2009-11-02, 10:41 AM
So how many resource, intelligence and sciencey dots DOES it take to create thousands upon thousands of self-replicating nano-machines capable of distributing themselves across the human race?
It requires being a high-ranking high-arete Iteration-X (or possibly Progenitor) Technomancer. Remember, science only works that way because the Technocracy makes you think it does.

graymachine
2009-11-02, 12:10 PM
It requires being a high-ranking high-arete Iteration-X (or possibly Progenitor) Technomancer. Remember, science only works that way because the Technocracy makes you think it does.

Yeah, Kurald is spot on about the limiting factors for super-magick. Mostly, you would have to be an Oracle, or the Technocracy equivalent, to do something like that. However, it would be questionable as to whether or not you would be willing.

I think we might want to explore the possibilities of a Marauder werewolf hunter. :smallbiggrin:

Roupe
2009-11-02, 01:38 PM
Toxic or nerve gas. Use Gas, Vampires dont need to breathe, like mortals.Also With certain merits It would be possible for a vampire to store gas inside the lungs and blow it out as a deadly breath attack.

Personal favorit for a Vampire haven is Halon Gas: Prevents fires and makes the area unbreathable. Its hard to get rid of gas with wind spells if its in a confined indoor area.

Deadmeat.GW
2009-11-02, 03:14 PM
This last tactic is a good one for defense, that would work against most garou.

But it does not make you a hunter.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-11-02, 07:12 PM
Yeah, Kurald is spot on about the limiting factors for super-magick. Mostly, you would have to be an Oracle, or the Technocracy equivalent, to do something like that. However, it would be questionable as to whether or not you would be willing.

I think we might want to explore the possibilities of a Marauder werewolf hunter. :smallbiggrin:
Actually, I think some of the Void Engineers are dedicated to eradicating unnatural creatures from the Earth. I don't recall whether they'd consider Werewolves "unnatural" - but if they did, I bet they have some fun toys.

Anyhoo, the problem with death-by-nanomachine is that Paradox affects the Technocracy as much as anyone else - this is why only Awakened agents get to carry around the really reality-breaking stuff. The most powerful, persistent effect they have are the Iteration-X HitMarks and Cyborgs - because people can accept that killer robots exist :smalltongue:

Honestly, I'd say either Sons of Ether or Hermetics would make the best Werewolf Hunters. Unlike the Technocracy, they don't mind telling Reality to sit down and shut up, and Forces & Matter are two excellent Spheres to have when facing Werewolves.

I mean, transmuting Lead-to-Silver is only a Matter 2 Effect. Who was worried about the expense of magazines full of silver bullets? :smallamused:

graymachine
2009-11-03, 10:05 AM
Heh. The Marauder fills the streets with blue dinosaurs that are ridden by cowboys carrying flamethrowers. He just sucks up the paradox from it, turning the surroundings into a reflection of his particular madness and spawning more hobgoblins.

elonin
2009-11-03, 04:16 PM
This thread misses the point in a really big way. These two systems don't play well together except in minimal ways. Vampire is at it's core a social game with some combat thrown in while werewolf is a combat game with some role play thrown in. I'll admit that my memory is fuzzy but not every werewolf gets aggravated damage via claws, thought the ones who do are combat spec'd to begin with, admittedly. For the most part the lupines would be facing gouls with silver bullets (lots of them) each doing at least one point (though likely more) of unsoakable damage. This is a pretty much free for cam vamps. I'm skeptical about the idea of spirit traveling to surprise the vamps. From what I remember in the werewolf book the spirit world is more dangerous for the garou then the real world (esp in the cities).

Oracle_Hunter
2009-11-03, 04:18 PM
I'll admit that my memory is fuzzy but not every werewolf gets aggravated damage via claws, thought the ones who do are combat spec'd to begin with, admittedly. For the most part the lupines would be facing gouls with silver bullets (lots of them) each doing at least one point (though likely more) of unsoakable damage. This is a pretty much free for cam vamps. I'm skeptical about the idea of spirit traveling to surprise the vamps. From what I remember in the werewolf book the spirit world is more dangerous for the garou then the real world (esp in the cities).
Nope.

Every Werewolf causes aggravated damage with their claws. And teeth too.

Yes, even Glasswalkers.

EDIT: And armies of Ghouls with silver-loading assault rifles? Really? :smallconfused:

elonin
2009-11-03, 04:50 PM
Nope.

Every Werewolf causes aggravated damage with their claws. And teeth too.

Yes, even Glasswalkers.

EDIT: And armies of Ghouls with silver-loading assault rifles? Really? :smallconfused:


Didn't say assault rifles. Just has to be silver. And let's not presume we are only talking about cam vamps. With the sabbot your new shock troupe is only a grave away. And while it takes a bit of time there is the vohzid which is a tzimisce creation that is effectively a huge ball of attack. Where in the rules did it state that all lupines get claws in crinos?

Deadmeat.GW
2009-11-04, 10:57 AM
Hum, in the basic rules...ONLY METIS Crinos may have a flaw which means they do not have claws in their Crinos form...

Otherwise they all have claws and fangs.

Tiki Snakes
2009-11-04, 11:16 AM
Speaking as an observer, there's a definate tend for the vampire side of the discussion to assume crippling wealth and resources as par for the course.
There's something disengenuous about the idea of any vampire defence involving vast numbers of ghouls armed to the teeth with several tons of silver bullets.

Hell, if we're playing that kind of game, it goes both ways. The werewolves all have flamethrowers. Yeah, they stole them from the military on account of that, er, spirit-world-travel-thing of theirs.

Have fun with that, flammables.

Roupe
2009-11-04, 11:23 AM
The Setites Serpentis have Skin of the Adder (lvl3) that allows stamina preventing aggrevated damage (from claws and bites).

chiasaur11
2009-11-04, 11:34 AM
Speaking as an observer, there's a definate tend for the vampire side of the discussion to assume crippling wealth and resources as par for the course.
There's something disengenuous about the idea of any vampire defence involving vast numbers of ghouls armed to the teeth with several tons of silver bullets.

Hell, if we're playing that kind of game, it goes both ways. The werewolves all have flamethrowers. Yeah, they stole them from the military on account of that, er, spirit-world-travel-thing of theirs.

Have fun with that, flammables.

And if Hunters get involved, they get the guy from the cover of the book.

The one who's laughing off multiple werewolf attacks at once.

You don't want to know what the mages get.

Tiki Snakes
2009-11-04, 11:36 AM
You don't want to know what the mages get.

Well, I imagine the Mages get to make reality sit up and beg. :) What more do you need, really?

Roupe
2009-11-04, 12:00 PM
Anyway, If a werewolf and a vampire decides to fight, they are often both screwed.

Werewolfs like to lick claws (some gifts require it) and can use bite attacks, however.
Due to a suicide switch /defence against embracing" The werewolfs are close to allergic to vampire blood, and will puke for a scene if they get it in their mouths. And if they get vampire blood on them, they can get wyrm tainted if the vampires road rating in most roads was medium to low. Wyrm tainted werewolfs are not allowed back into the caern (for obvious reasons) and often needs to go on a pilgrimage/quest to get cleansed. So to sum up. Loss of Honor (puking), Wyrm taint, and loss of time (sidequest). Ok not so bad.

When vampipres get damaged in a fight they tend to go frenzy, and want to drink blood. Werewolfs blood induces frenzy in vampires, until its out of the system. Frenzy means loss of road, and loss of controll. Oh and In frenzy the vampire will spend nonwerewolf blood first. Nothing prevents the Beast ridden vampire from drinking more blood to maintain the frenzy, beast would often insist on it.

This leads to a High chance for the vampire to break the masquerade in his werewolf blood frenzy. Then when the blood is at zero and no blood sources/victims nearby, the vampires risks torpor at a location not garanteed safe from sunlight. So to sum up, Loss of road/path, Violations of the traditions, chance for torpor and perhaps in a sunlit area.

Vampires that have lost themselfs to the beasts are good monsters for a GM in a vampire campaign, unlike the out of system broken supernaturals.

Kurald Galain
2009-11-04, 12:11 PM
Werewolfs like to lick claws (some gifts require it)
(1) such as what?
(2) you do that before combat, not during.


And if they get vampire blood on them, they can get wyrm tainted
Taint Doesn't Work That Way. Good night.

Roupe
2009-11-04, 12:16 PM
(1) such as what?
Opps, apparently I remember it wrong.